Five years after becoming the first American to be charged for espionage in nearly four decades, Thomas Drake is still trying to rebuild his life.
In 2010, Drake, a senior executive with the National Security Agency from 2001 to 2008, was indicted by the Obama administration for leaking classified information under the Espionage Act after speaking out on secret mass surveillance programs, multibillion-dollar fraud and intelligence failures from 9/11.
He was the first U.S. whistleblower to be charged under the Espionage Act since Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, and faced 35 years in prison before the government’s charges against him were ultimately dropped in 2011.
“I had become a dissident as far as the NSA was concerned,” Drake said during “Secret Sources: Whistleblowers, National Security, and Free Expression,” a panel examining the impact of the Obama administration’s response to national security leaks at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. “If you become a dissident, the white blood cells kick in, culturally, to get rid of you.”