Drake action within the NSA In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the NSA desired new tools to collect intelligence from the growing flood of information pouring out of the new digital networks like the Internet. Drake became involved in the internal NSA debate between two of these tools, the
Trailblazer Project and the
ThinThread project. Drake worked his way through the legal processes that are prescribed for government employees who believe that questionable activities are taking place in their departments. and Ed Loomis, Roark got no response from any of the three men.
NSA own inquiry and acknowledgement By 2003, the NSA Inspector General (IG) "the Regular Meetings", "Volume is our Friend", "Trial and Testing", and "Collections Sites". "Regular Meetings" was marked "UNCLASSIFIED" and posted on
NSANet but prosecution argues the defendant should have known it was really classified. Drake's team also argued that the latter three of the five named documents were part of a collection of thousands of unclassified papers related to the DoD Inspector General Report (mentioned above). Drake's defense attorneys argued this meant that the defendant brought home the material accidentally, not "willfully."
Jesselyn Radack, of the
Government Accountability Project, has also discussed the case. The U.S. government publicly stated that the prosecution of Thomas Drake was not intended to
deter government employees from reporting problems. "Whistle-blowers are the key to many, many department investigations—we don't retaliate against them, we encourage them", a spokesman for the Justice Department said. "This indictment was brought on the merits, and nothing else."
Court proceedings In the spring of 2011, the prosecution made several moves to restrict the normally open proceedings of a jury trial in a United States courtroom, as reported by Gerstein at
Politico and others. This was done under the legal auspices of the
Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), which attempts in theory to prevent the release of classified information during open trials. The prosecution also moved to use the controversial "
silent witness rule," in which exhibits are hidden from the public by the use of "code words" in court. The government had only attempted to use the rule a handful of times previously; its legality has been challenged under the
Fifth and
Sixth Amendments. In addition, the prosecution also had the court
seal two exhibits the defense had already published in one of its public court filings, which listed various documents the prosecution would try to use at trial. Expressing his "irritation" with the prosecution, Bennett also completely rejected the government's request for a $50,000 fine, despite the sentencing guidelines recommending a fine of $500-$5,000. He noted that Drake had been financially devastated, spending $82,000 on his defense, losing his $154,600 job at the NSA and his pension, and being fired from his university teaching position. He sentenced Drake to one year of probation and 240 hours of community service. and in September sent an audio message of support to
CryptoParty. On March 15, 2013, Drake spoke at a
National Press Club Luncheon about the national intelligence community and its attitude towards whistle-blowing. Drake inspired
Edward Snowden to leak information on the NSA spying program
PRISM in June 2013. Snowden went public rather than reporting within the system due to the reprisals against Drake (and other whistleblowers), which led the Assistant
Defense Department Inspector General (DoD IG) in charge of the
whistleblower unit,
John Crane, to himself become a whistleblower when it became apparent that Drake's identity had been leaked by DoD IG to the
Justice Department. Drake has become an activist against the surveillance state, frequently giving interviews and speaking at events such as
Restore the Fourth and Stand Up For Truth. One of the themes of his speeches and interviews is a "privacy exercise" as follows "Put your entire life in a box, your documents, bank accounts, your passwords, everything—and give it to a complete stranger—a fellow American for safekeeping. Would you do it?" he states that he has yet to encounter a "yes". In a September 2013 interview, Drake reaffirmed his belief that the problems of the NSA are so chronic and systemic that the only solution would be to completely dismantle and subsequently rebuild the entire organization. On July 3, 2014, Drake along with former Technical Director of the NSA
William Binney gave testimony to the
German Parliamentary Committee investigating the NSA spying scandal. He described the close cooperation between the NSA and the German secret service
BND. On November 10, 2015, Drake appeared on a
PEN American Center panel at the
Newseum about "Secret Sources: Whistleblowers, National Security and Free Expression." In 2014, Drake supported the international launch of The Whistler founded by
Eileen Chubb and
Gavin MacFadyen. In 2015, The Whistleblower Interview Project published Drake's contribution to the project. == Espionage Act and whistleblowing ==