The Justice Department is charging Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency executive, with espionage for taking top-secret documents from N.S.A. offices and leaking information to a Baltimore Sun reporter. The reporter, Siobhan Gorman, wrote a prize-winning series of stories about waste, mismanagement, and dubious legal practices in the agency’s counter terrorism programs.
New Yorker writer Jane Mayer quotes Secrecy News‘ Steven Aftergood who has followed the Drake indictment closely and thinks the case has great significance, “The government wants this to be about unlawfully retained information. The defense, meanwhile, is painting a picture of a public-interested whistle-blower who struggled to bring attention to what he saw as multibillion-dollar mismanagement.” [Because Drake is not a spy leaking information to foreign governments, the case will] “test whether intelligence officers can be convicted of violating the Espionage Act even if their intent is pure.” -db
From an analysis in The New Yorker, May 23, 2011, by Jane Mayer.