Ex-NSA official Thomas Drake to plead guilty to misdemeanor 9JUN11

THIS is a victory for whistle blowers and the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, and more justification for the alleged actions of Bradley Manning. The American people have the right to know of corruption, mismanagement, and violations of our constitution of and by our government, the Obama administration is wasting time and taxpayer dollars by prosecuting honest, patriotic whistle blowers and should be prosecuting the government officials, military commanders and corporations guilty of breaking the law. 

By Ellen Nakashima

Former National Security Agency manager and accused leaker Thomas A. Drake onThursday accepted a plea deal from the government that drops all charges in the indictment, absolves him of mishandling classified information and calls for no prison time.
In exchange, Drake, who could have faced 35 years in prison if he had been convicted of violating the Espionage Act, will plead guilty to a misdemeanor of misusing a government computer to share information with a person unauthorized to receive it.
He will pay no fine, and the maximum probation time he can serve will be capped at one year.
The deal is a victory for Drake, 54, who was indicted in May 2010 for willful retention of “national defense” or classified information, obstruction of justice and making a false statement.
Drake plans to appear in U.S. District Court in Baltimore Friday morning before Judge Richard Bennett to formally enter the plea.
The government’s case against Drake had greatly weakened, and on Wednesday he twice refused to accept offers of a plea bargain, according to people following the case. The trail was set to begin Monday.
Drake turned down a deal to plead guilty to unauthorized retention of classified documents. It was a deal similar to the one accepted in 2005 plea by former national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger after he removed and shredded classified material relating to the Clinton administration’s record on terrorism from the National Archives.
“Why should you plead to something you didn’t do?” said Bill Binney, a friend and former colleague who, with Drake, tried to raise concerns about what they saw NSA corruption and constitutional violations. “That’s the whole point. People of character don’t do that.”
Prosecutors informed U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett this week that they would withhold documents they had planned to introduce as evidence to keep from disclosing sensitive technology. Drake is charged with unlawfully retaining classified information at a time when he was in touch with a Baltimore Sun reporter who later chronicled mismanagement at the agency.
The government had used the 1917 Espionage Act, which has been criticized as vague and overbroad, to charge Drake, one of five such cases against alleged leakers under the Obama administration. Drake was not accused of spying, but the law’s provisions criminalize the unauthorized retention of classified material.
The government’s decision to withhold certain documents appeared to complicate prosecutors’ efforts to prove a violation of the act, suggesting that the government might have overreached in using an espionage law to target a suspected leaker.
“By withdrawing several of the exhibits, at least a couple of the counts against Drake will almost certainly need to be dismissed,” Steven Aftergood, a national security expert with the Federation of American Scientists who has followed the case closely since Drake was indicted last year, said before the plea agreement was reached. “It changes the whole dynamic of the prosecution and may even set the stage for settlement or dismissal.”
Aftergood added, “What’s striking is that the government now seems more eager to reach some kind of resolution... It seems like right now the prosecutors are doing more pleading than Mr. Drake is.”
Transparency activists and media experts warn that such prosecutions could stanch the flow of information the public needs to judge policy, and George W. Bush administration officials see the prosecutions as selective — ignoring high-level officials who release sensitive information to advance their personal or policy agendas.
Justice Department spokesman Laura Sweeney declined to comment on the case.
Drake was a senior executive at the NSA — a “senior change leader” — who professed an ambition to change the agency’s insular culture. He became disillusioned with the agency’s handling of major technology programs and concerned that the NSA was needlessly violating Americans’ privacy through a massive surveillance program adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He raised concerns with officials and the inspector general, and later with the reporter, before leaving the agency in 2008.
Leak prosecutions under the Espionage Act had been relatively rare until the Obama administration. Daniel Ellsberg, who gave the Pentagon Papers to a reporter, was the first leaker indicted under the law, but his case ended with a mistrial after government misconduct.
The Obama administration is presiding over five cases involving the act, including those against Pfc. Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst accused of passing State Department and military war data to the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks; Stephen Kim, a former State Department analyst accused of leaking to a television reporter; and Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA analyst accused of passing classified information to author and New York Times reporter James Risen.
“Obama is prosecuting whistleblowers who made the kinds of disclosures that he said he wants — contractors bilking the government of billions of dollars,” said Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department whistleblower and director of national security at the Government Accountability Project. “That’s what Drake did.”