Stop the Retaliatory Prosecution of Thomas Drake, NSA Whistleblower and American Hero
Targeting: The President of the United States and Attorney General Eric Holder
Started by: Government Accountability Project
LINK

Thomas Drake is a former National Security Agency employee who is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act for retaining, not leaking, classified information in conjunction with a series of news articles that revealed gross mismanagement and terrible waste in the agency. Despite the Espionage Act's Cold War connotations, Drake is not being charged with anything remotely related to spying. Far from it, Drake is a patriot who was appalled to see hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars wasted and the civil liberties of countless American citizens ignored.

Without adequate internal disclosure channels, intelligence whistleblowers are faced with an impossible choice. They can either risk their careers by making unprotected internal disclosures, or remain silent about horrible problems, such as gross waste, privacy violations, or even lapses in national security.

Drake protected the American people from waste and abuse at the hands of their government. If anything, he should be applauded for his actions.

Contact President Obama and Attorney General Holder by signing the petition below, and urge them to end this senseless retaliatory campaign. Comments can also be directed to the White House comment line at 202-456-1111 and the Office of the Attorney General public comment line at 202-353-1555.

Petition Text
Stop the Retaliatory Prosecution of Thomas Drake

To the Honorable Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama:

We, the undersigned, call for the U.S. Department of Justice to immediately dismiss the
unfounded charges against former National Security Agency (NSA) official Thomas A.
Drake, of alleged unlawful retention of classified information, obstruction of justice and
making false statements.

We are aghast by the actions taken against Mr. Drake, who acted on behalf of the
American public, when he upheld his oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution
and lawfully abide by the prevailing directives, statutes and procedures. Mr. Drake came
forward with information that the NSA chose a set of expensive, invasive and failed
programs over far less costly, highly innovative and much more effective programs –
with one that even contained built-in privacy protections designed to fundamentally
ensure that the NSA would not unlawfully eavesdrop, data mine or conduct illegal
electronic surveillance against U.S. Persons domestically, including our own U.S.
citizens.

Mr. Drake utilized all of the proper channels to report illegalities, abuse and waste of
taxpayer dollars. He first made his complaints known internally to his bosses, to the
NSA's General Counsel and Inspector General, to the Defense Department's Inspector
General, and to the House and Senate intelligence committees and at least two formal
Congressionally-directed 9/11 investigations in which he was called as a material
witness--completely in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower
Protection Act. After years of inaction by the government, Mr. Drake contacted a reporter
about unclassified information relating to the significant and expansive fraud, waste,
and abuse of taxpayer dollars as well as the existence of lawful alternative programs that
would have also significantly improved U.S. intelligence capability.

We greatly appreciate the Administration’s unprecedented efforts to strengthen rights
by restoring a credible Whistleblower Protection Act. Under the Administration’s own
legislative proposal it would be illegal to terminate Mr. Drake or take any other job
action against him for his disclosures. But the legislation has not been enacted, and in
the interim the Administration is criminally prosecuting him for identical initiatives
on behalf of the taxpayers. This contradiction demands resolution consistent with the
Administration’s stated campaign and governing policies. It is little solace to protect
whistleblowers from being fired, if instead the Administration tries to put them in prison.

Mr. Drake is being indicted under a very novel and questionable use of the Espionage Act
for alleged retention of classified information, and potentially faces upwards of 35 years
in prison. However, there is no evidence for the unprecedented charges that have been
brought against Mr. Drake other than the government apparently wanting to punish him
out of reprisal and retribution and hide its own activities behind the veil of state secrets.
Mr. Drake is not a spy. He is a whistleblower for America’s taxpayers. Have they become
enemies of the state? Demonstrate your commitment to the American public, and to those
who have the courage to protect and defend our Constitution and taxpayer dollars in
defense of the United States, by immediately dismissing all charges against Mr. Drake.

Former NSA Senior Executive Charged with Illegally Retaining Classified Information, Obstructing Justice and Making False Statements
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:33:19 -0500

A federal grand jury in the District of Maryland has returned a 10-count indictment charging former National Security Agency (NSA) senior executive Thomas A. Drake with the willful retention of classified information, obstruction of justice and making false statements.

According to the indictment, Drake, 52, was a high-ranking NSA employee from 2001 through 2008, where he had access to highly classified documents and information. The indictment alleges that between approximately February 2006 and November 2007, a newspaper reporter published a series of articles about the NSA. The indictment alleges that Drake served as a source for many of those articles, including articles that contained classified information. The indictment also alleges that Drake took a series of steps to facilitate the provision of this information to the reporter, including:

* exchanging hundreds of e-mails with and meeting with the reporter;

* researching stories for the reporter to write in the future by e-mailing unwitting NSA employees and accessing classified and unclassified documents on classified NSA networks;

* copying and pasting classified and unclassified information from NSA documents into untitled word processing documents which, when printed, had the classification markings removed;

* printing both classified and unclassified documents, bringing them to his home, and retaining them there without authority;

* scanning and emailing electronic copies of classified and unclassified documents to the reporter from his home computer; and

* reviewing, commenting on, and editing drafts of the reporter’s articles.

"As alleged, this defendant used a secret, non-government e-mail account to transmit classified and unclassified information that he was not authorized to possess or disclose. As if those allegations are not serious enough, he also allegedly later shredded documents and lied about his conduct to federal agents in order to obstruct their investigation," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer. "Our national security demands that the sort of conduct alleged here – violating the government’s trust by illegally retaining and disclosing classified information – be prosecuted and prosecuted vigorously."

"The FBI takes very seriously allegations involving government employees who willfully retain or disclose classified information they are not authorized to possess. Working with prosecutors, we will continue to investigate and pursue charges against these individuals whose actions cannot be justified or tolerated," said Arthur M. Cummings II, FBI Executive Assistant Director, National Security Branch.

The indictment alleges that Drake received training regarding the protection of classified information, including the instruction not to remove classified information from the NSA. The indictment also alleges that Drake signed acknowledgments affirming that any documents or information he intended for public disclosure were required to be submitted to the NSA for pre-publication review. At no time, according to the indictment, did the NSA authorize Drake to de-classify information or to disclose classified information to unauthorized persons, nor did the NSA authorize Drake to copy and print classified information in a manner that removed its classification markings or to possess classified documents or information at his home.

The indictment alleges that in approximately November 2005, a former congressional staffer asked Drake to speak with a reporter. Between November 2005 and February 2006, according to the indictment, Drake signed up for a free account and then paid for a premium account with an e-mail service that enabled its users to exchange secure e-mails without disclosing the sender or recipient’s identity. Using an alias, Drake allegedly then contacted the reporter and volunteered to disclose information about the NSA. The indictment alleges that Drake directed the reporter to create the reporter’s own secure e-mail account. After the reporter created such an account, Drake also allegedly required the reporter to agree to certain conditions, including never revealing Drake’s identity; attributing information gathered from Drake to a "senior intelligence official"; never using Drake as a single source for information; never telling Drake who the reporter’s other sources were; and not commenting on what people, to whom Drake recommended the reporter speak, said to the reporter.

Drake allegedly attempted to conceal his relationship with the reporter and prevent the discovery of evidence linking Drake to his retention of classified documents after the FBI began a criminal investigation into the disclosure of classified information. Specifically, Drake allegedly shredded classified and unclassified documents, including his handwritten notes that he had removed from the NSA; deleted classified and unclassified information on his home computer; and made false statements to FBI agents.

The indictment charges Drake with five counts of willfully retaining documents that relate to the national defense. These include four classified e-mails and an additional classified document. In addition, the indictment charges Drake with obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying and deleting documents with the intent to impede and obstruct the federal investigation into alleged disclosures of classified information. The indictment also charges Drake with four counts of making false statements to FBI agents.

Willful retention of classified documents carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Obstruction of justice carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The charge of making a false statement carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Each of the charged counts carries a maximum fine of $250,000.

The case is being prosecuted by Senior Litigation Counsel William M. Welch II of the Criminal Division and Trial Attorney John P. Pearson of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section. This case is being investigated by the FBI and the NSA Office of Security & Counterintelligence. The National Security Division also provided assistance in this matter.

An indictment is merely an allegation. Defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/2.544241

Thomas Drake, "Measuring Software Quality: A Case Study," Computer, vol. 29, no. 11, pp. 78-87, November, 1996.

DOI Bookmark

Over the years, the National Security Agency has become extremely dependent on the software that makes up its information technology infrastructure. NSA has come to view software as a critical resource upon which much of the world's security, prosperity, and economic competitiveness increasingly rest. If anything, dependence on software and its corresponding effect on national security makes it imperative for NSA to accept and maintain only the highest quality software. Cost overruns or software systems that are defective or of low quality can impose a significant burden on national security and NSA's mission. NSA is no more immune than the rest of the software industry to the problems of low-quality software. Software development is intensely manual in nature, and it inevitably falls victim to rushed schedules, constantly changing requirements, poor process, and failure to adhere to software engineering practices. So what is NSA doing about software quality? The NSA's Software Engineering Applied Technology Center has done metrics analysis on some 25 million lines of code. The result is a highly correlated set of measures that we have developed into a streamlined set of code-level release criteria that we apply to code written at NSA organizations. The author describes these critical measures and has drawn up a case study to illustrate the benefits of applied quality assurance and code-level measurement activities.