TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thomas Drake, a former NSA employee, is charged with violating the 1917 Espionage Act for taking and storing five classified documents at his home for the purpose of releasing them. He could face thirty-five years in prison.

He released information to a Baltimore Sun journalist on two NSA projects for collecting and classifying signals intelligence. One project was a disaster, wasting tens of millions of dollars, while the other—which incorporated privacy controls so the privacy of American citizens caught within it was projected—was rejected.

Federal agents found the classified documents in question after they raided his home in connection with a separate leak to the New York Times about the NSA’s warrantless-wiretapping, which Drake was not involved with. Drake had the documents at home because he had made copies of them for a Pentagon Inspector General’s report he signed on the wasteful signals intelligence program.

He didn’t release sensitive information to enemies of the United States; he released information to the press that made clear the NSA was being poorly managed and had violated the privacy of American citizens. He embarrassed the NSA and the government, and now he is being charged under the Espionage Act.

The three others who signed the Inspector General’s report also had their homes raided by the federal government. One of them, Diane Drake—who was a staff member providing Congressional oversight of the NSA—believes the raids and charges against Drake are retribution for embarrassing the agency:

Roark, who always considered herself “a law-and-order person,” said of the raid, “This changed my faith.” Eventually, the prosecution offered her a plea bargain, under which she would plead guilty to perjury, for ostensibly lying to the F.B.I. about press leaks. The prosecutors also wanted her to testify against Drake. Roark refused. “I’m not going to plead guilty to deliberately doing anything wrong,” she told them. “And I can’t testify against Tom because I don’t know that he did anything wrong. Whatever Tom revealed, I am sure that he did not think it was classified.” She says, “I didn’t think the system was perfect, but I thought they’d play fair with me. They didn’t. I felt it was retribution.”