There are a very few people on this earth who can relate to having their home ransacked by the FBI in search of classified documents thought to be held in violation of the Espionage Act. One of those people is a former senior NSA official named Thomas Drake.
In November 2007, a swarm of armed FBI agents showed up to his house with a ram they never got to use, because Drake’s 12-year-old son simply answered the door. Drake was searched on suspicion of improperly taking classified material and later charged with “willful retention” of various documents under the Espionage Act. These charges are widely believed to have been retaliation for complaints and disclosures Drake made about illegal surveillance, intelligence failures, and massive waste, fraud, and abuse within the National Security Agency in the wake of September 11, 2001, which was, coincidentally, Drake’s very first day on the job.
Among the papers that Drake was accused of taking was one marked “unclassified” and posted on the NSA’s internal website, but the government would argue that it should have been classified and that Drake should have known this. After a lengthy and financially devastating legal battle, 11 of the 11 felony charges were dropped, and Drake pled out on “Exceeding Authorized Use of a Computer,” a misdemeanor. Drake had essentially won, though not before losing his job, his marriage, and his savings. We spoke after Drake’s shift at an Apple Store, where he has worked for the last 13 years.
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