The Reva and David Logan Foundation, the taz Panther Foundation, the Wau Holland Foundation and Whistleblower-Netzwerk announced the launch of the International Ellsberg Whistleblower Award, which “will be presented to individuals and organizations worldwide whose efforts have helped disclose information that significantly enhances free public or scientific debate, strengthening the public’s right to know and thus democracy.”
The first to receive the International Ellsberg Whistleblower Award will be Courage Foundation beneficiary Daniel Hale, a former Air Force and NSA intelligence analyst who revealed the clandestine drone assassination program of the Obama administration. “His whistleblowing raised critical awareness about the balance between national security, the public’s right to know, and ethics in modern warfare”, the founding organizations said, adding that “shortly before his passing, Daniel Ellsberg personally chose Hale to become the very first recipient of the Ellsberg Whistleblowing Award.”
In 2014, Hale passed classified U.S. military documents to reporters at The Intercept, which subsequently published The Drone Papers, giving the public an unvarnished window into the secretive U.S. remote assassination program, including how it selects targets to kill based on poor evidence, due to which 9 out of 10 drone casualties were innocent bystanders. At the same time the government “masks the true number of civilians killed in drone strikes by categorizing unidentified people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended targets” (The Assassination Complex, The Intercept, October 15, 2015).
Commenting on his motivation, Hale explained: “No person should have to die for a crime that they did not commit. Just as no person should have to live with the burden of having taken a poor, defenseless, innocent life.” For his whistleblowing, Hale was indicted under the 1917 US Espionage Act and convicted to a 45-month prison sentence in 2021. He was released from prison in February 2024 after serving 33 months of his sentence, from which he is now recovering.