A Nashville man who worked as an intelligence analyst was arrested this morning and charged with leaking classified information to a reporter.
Former airman Daniel Everette Hale is slated to appear in federal court later today, according to the Justice Department. He’s accused of leaking secret information to a journalist whose news outlet then published the classified documents.
According to the indictment, Hale served in U.S. Air Force from July 2009 to July 2013, and was then assigned to work at the National Security Agency and deployed to Afghanistan as an intelligence analyst.
After the Air Force, Hale became a contractor for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. It was in April 2013, while enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and assigned to NSA, that he first began communicating with a reporter, according to the indictment.
In February 2014, while working at NGA, Hale allegedly gave the reporter classified information the reporter’s news outlet then published. Eleven of the published documents were top secret or secret.
Hale is charged with obtaining national defense information, retention and transmission of national defense information, causing the communication of national defense information, disclosure of classified communications intelligence information, and theft of government property. Each charge has a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.