Thomas Drake is a former senior executive at the NSA whom Kiriakou describes as a dear friend and a fellow whistleblower. [1] Kiriakou says Drake, a former Air Force colonel, joined the NSA’s Senior Intelligence Service as a civilian, and that his very first day on the job was September 11, 2001. [2] He says that under NSA director Michael Hayden, who later ran the CIA, the agency implemented a collection program called Thin Thread that vacuumed up the communications of all Americans, followed by a second program called Stellar Wind that used artificial intelligence to sort through the data for threats. [3] [4]
According to Kiriakou, Drake objected that the programs illegally collected data on Americans and was told to mind his own business, so he went through the chain of command: to his boss, who told him he didn’t have the whole story and should back out — to which Drake replied that the program was a violation not only of the law but of the NSA’s own charter, which forbade spying on Americans — then to the NSA inspector general, who wasn’t cleared to know about the program; and to the general counsel, who told him the issue was above his pay grade. [4] [5] [6] Kiriakou says Drake then took his documentation to the Pentagon inspector general, who reported him to the FBI and destroyed the evidence — an inspector general Kiriakou says is now himself under criminal investigation at the Department of Defense — and finally to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, after which the FBI raided his home, seized his electronics, and arrested him. [7] [8] [9]
Kiriakou says Drake was charged with nine felonies, including seven counts under the Espionage Act and two counts of theft of government property, the “property” being information he carried out of the building in his own head; prosecutors sought 35 years in prison, which Kiriakou says they called “a death sentence,” and offered him a plea deal of 10 to 20 years, which he refused. [8] [10] In a separate telling, Kiriakou puts the count at 10 felony indictments, including five counts of espionage.[11] Kiriakou says prosecutors told Drake at a proffer meeting that he had “the blood of American soldiers” on his hands, to which Drake responded by demanding they name one soldier, and that he attributes the prosecutorial zeal to White House pressure that he says actually began under George W. Bush rather than solely under Obama. [12] On the morning of Drake’s arrest, agents told his wife — also an NSA employee — that she had to choose sides; she chose the government. [13] Kiriakou says 60 Minutes aired an exposé on the case the day before trial began, and that night the judge dismissed all charges, ruling there was no case and it was “bona fide whistleblowing.” [14] He says that after the government seized Drake’s bank accounts, leaving him reliant on a public defender, the case collapsed the night before trial and all charges were dropped, but Drake had already lost his pension, his security clearance, and his marriage — his wife, also a senior NSA officer, left him — he lost his five children and, per Kiriakou, only began rebuilding that relationship two decades later — and went to work at an Apple Store Genius Bar in Bethesda, Maryland, a fate Kiriakou says also befell NSA whistleblowers Kirk Wiebe and Bill Binney, neither of whom, like Drake, ever revealed classified information. [15] [16] [13] [11] [17] [18]
Kiriakou says Edward Snowden later told the New York Times that he had watched both Drake’s case and Kiriakou’s own, and that seeing neither of them back down under pressure helped inspire him to go public with his own revelations. [19]