WASHINGTON, June 9 (UPI) -- A former top U.S. national security official will plead guilty to a misdemeanor and more serious Espionage Act charges will be dropped, lawyers said Thursday.
Thomas A. Drake, a former National Security Agency manager who was indicted in April 2010 on 10 felony counts -- including willful retention of classified information, obstruction of justice and making false statements -- will plead guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore Friday to misusing a government computer to share government information with someone not authorized to receive the information, The Washington Post reported.
At the time of his indictment, prosecutors said Drake, a high-ranking NSA official from 2001 to 2008, was a source for a series of newspaper articles about the agency from February 2006 to November 2007.
The plea deal calls for no prison time for Drake, 54, who could have been sentenced to as much as 35 years in prison if convicted of violating the 1917 Espionage Act, the Post said. He will pay no fine and can be ordered to serve probation for no longer than one year, the newspaper said.
With trial set to begin Monday, prosecutors told the court this week they would withhold documents they'd intended to use in the case, because to use them would expose sensitive technology information, the Post said.
Steven Aftergood, a national security expert with the Federation of American Scientists, told the newspaper the decision not to use those documents weakened the prosecution case considerably.
"It seems like right now the prosecutors are doing more pleading than Mr. Drake is," he said.
Drake's defenders claimed he broke no laws and was being persecuted by the government for having blown the whistle on the NSA's allegedly privacy-invading Trailblazer Project, intended to analyze data carried on communications networks such as the Internet.
The project ran over budget and failed to accomplish several goals. Several whistle-blowers, including Drake, complained about it, and Congress and the Defense Department's inspector general's office investigated it before it was shut down in 2006.
Drake allegedly shared classified information with a Baltimore Sun reporter who chronicled agency mismanagement.
