NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Sees a Hard Road Ahead for Ed Snowden

What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience.

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The NSA programs that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11.

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[GW Bush’s] executive fiat of 2001 violated not just the fourth amendment, but also Fisa rules at the time, which made it a felony – carrying a penalty of $10,000 and five years in prison for each and every instance. The supposed oversight, combined with enabling legislation – the Fisa court, the congressional committees – is all a kabuki dance, predicated on the national security claim that we need to find a threat. The reality is, they just want it all, period.

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All you need to know about so-called oversight is that the NSA was already in violation of the Patriot Act by the time it was signed into law.

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I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he's been following this for years: he's seen what's happened to other whistleblowers like me.

By following protocol, you get flagged – just for raising issues. You're identified as someone they don't like, someone not to be trusted.

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I took my concerns up within the chain of command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to Congress and the Department of Defense.

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[And] as I found out later, none of the material evidence I disclosed went into the official record. It became a state secret even to give information of this kind to the 9/11 investigation.

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In July 2011, after the government's case [against me] had collapsed under the weight of truth, I plead to a minor misdemeanor for "exceeding authorized use of a computer" under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – in exchange for the DOJ dropping all ten felony counts. I received as a sentence one year's probation and 240 hours of community service: I interviewed almost 50 veterans for the Library of Congress veterans history project. This was a rare, almost unprecedented, case of a government prosecution of a whistleblower ending in total defeat and failure.

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I paid a very high price. And Edward Snowden will, too.

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[T]he stakes for whistleblowers are incredibly high. The government has got its knives out: there's a massive manhunt for Snowden. They will use all their resources to hunt him down and every detail of his life will be turned inside out. They'll do everything they can to "bring him to justice" – already there are calls for the "traitor" to be "put away for life".

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He can expect the worst; he knows that.

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We are seeing an unprecedented campaign against whistleblowers and truth-tellers: it's now criminal to expose the crimes of the state. Under this relentless assault by the Obama administration, I am the only person who has held them off and preserved his freedom. All the other whistleblowers I know have served time in jail, are facing jail or are already incarcerated or in prison.

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Since the government unchained itself from the constitution after 9/11, it has been eating our democracy alive from the inside out.

  Thomas Drake