A former Air Force intelligence officer has been arrested and charged with espionage for leaking information to the press detailing how the U.S. government uses armed drones for secret assassination missions in foreign countries.

Daniel Everette Hale, 31, of Nashville, was arrested this morning. According to the Justice Department, Hale, during his time in the Air Force as an intelligence analyst, and then later as a private sector employee of a defense contractor, passed along top secret documents to a reporter, some of which were published.

The 2013-2014 timeframe during which this leaking allegedly happened suggests that Hale may have played a role in The Drone Papers, published by The Intercept. The series documented the secret use of drones to kill human targets, both in countries in which we're engaged in authorized military action (like Afghanistan) and countries where we are not (like Yemen and Somalia).

The person who leaked these documents to The Intercept revealed that the government classified anybody killed by U.S. drone strikes—even if they weren't the target—as militants, and that's how they were able to insist that civilians weren't being killed in significant numbers.

The Intercept stories were not news to the Yemenis, Somalians, and Afghanis who have been affected by U.S. drone strikes on civilians. These people already knew that they and their loved ones are not terrorists. Hale—like Edward Snowden and Reality Winner—is being accused of "espionage" for the crime of informing the American people about their government's actions....