"Leaker targeted by US gets probation" July 16, 2011|Associated Press
BALTIMORE - A former senior spy agency official who admitting giving inside information to the Baltimore Sun about a major government electronic espionage program was given a year’s probation and community service yesterday, in a blow to the Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks to the media.
The judge rejected the government’s request for a stiff fine and scolded prosecutors for the way the case was handled.
Outside the courtroom, Thomas Drake, a 54-year-old former executive with the National Security Administration who now works at a Washington-area Apple Store, said he felt relieved and vindicated by the lenient sentence. “Justice did prevail in the end, proving the truth does matter,’’ he said.
Drake said he had been “personally and professionally shattered’’ by the government’s investigation and prosecution, which he called “vindictive and malicious.’’ He said investigators put his life, as well as the life of his family and friends, under intense scrutiny. “We’re talking about a microscope that’s set at a very high power of resolution,’’ he said....
The government’s case collapsed last month.
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FLASHBACK:
"US said to seek deal in classified leaks case
BALTIMORE -- The Justice Department on Thursday reached a plea agreement in the leak case against a former National Security Agency official.
In court papers, the government said Thomas Drake will plead guilty to exceeding authorized use of a computer, a misdemeanor.
The government's case has been hampered by its reluctance to reveal sensitive details of the operations of its mammoth electronic intelligence service. Prosecutors have sought to strictly limit what is revealed in court and have withdrawn some classified evidence, saying the material could disclose a target of NSA eavesdroppers.
His lawyers planned to portray him as a beleaguered whistleblower who leaked information in an effort to expose waste and abuse, according to court papers....
Sometime in late 2005 and early 2006, Drake contacted reporter Siobhan Gorman, then with The Baltimore Sun, who wrote an award-winning series on the NSA and Trailblazer, an ill-fated project launched in 2002 to overhaul the agency's vast computer systems to capture and screen information flooding into the agency's computers from the Internet and cell phones. The $1.2 billion program eventually failed, and the NSA abandoned it in 2006.
That means they changed the name.
Drake strongly supported an in-house system that was much cheaper and he said could have gathered critical information before Sept. 11....
Yeah, sure, they would have caught the "terrorists" before 9/11, blah, blah, blah.
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Related: Case faltering, whistleblower gets plea deal (By Scott Shane, New York Times)
