There’s an interesting discussion at the end of Josh Gerstein’s article on the Drake plea agreement. He points out that after Judge Bennett ruled that the government needed more descriptive substitutions for some of its exhibits, DOJ did not appeal the decision. Experts said it was unlikely that Bennett’s rulings accounted entirely for the government’s [...]

There’s something that’s missing from the coverage of the Thomas Drake plea bargain. Yes, this is a huge victory for Drake. A huge victory for whistleblowers. Yes, it proves that William Welch is an even bigger hack than the failed Ted Stevens case showed him to be. But what about the two other charged documents? [...]

National Counterterrorism Center head Michael Leiter resigned yesterday. I’m agnostic about whether that’s a good thing or not. NCTC got most of the blame for missing the UndieBomber, which Leiter exacerbated by going off on a ski vacation just after the attempted attack. But Leiter supposedly made some improvements at NCTC. But I am rather [...]

Thomas Drake just signed a plea agreement, admitting to Exceeding Authorized Use of a Computer. (h/t Steven Aftergood) The plea says: The defendant intentionally accessed a computer and exceeded his authorized access; by doing so, the defendant obtained information from any department of agency of the United States. [snip] From in or about February 2006 [...]

Back in April, the ACLU FOIAed a bunch of State Department cables that had been released via WikiLeaks. The State Department made no response. So now the ACLU is suing to get the cables. The suit is interesting for several reasons. First, check out which cables ACLU has FOIAed: The requested cables relate to the [...]

I wanted to look at the the three documents that the government is withdrawing in whole or in part in the Thomas Drake case. Ellen Nakashima implies that three of the documents are three of the five charged documents. According to people following the case, the government may have to drop two Espionage Act counts [...]

Apparently, the government is scrambling in the Thomas Drake case. According to Ellen Nakashima, they offered him two plea bargains yesterday, both involving no jail time. He rejected both. Drake has repeatedly told friends that he will never “plea bargain with the truth.” Drake turned down a deal to plead guilty to unauthorized retention of [...]

Chris Savage (Eclectablog) continues to track what the Emergency Financial Managers have been doing around Michigan. In new developments, the EFM for Pontiac MI, Michael Stampfler, broke the Police Dispatcher’s union contract, dissolved the Planning Commission, fired the water and wastewater department, and outsourced the latter function to a private company, United Water Services. Now, [...]

There’s something else that has been going on as the case against Thomas Drake has gotten narrowed because the government withdrew some of its exhibits. Drake’s lawyers have been arguing that some of this information–and, I believe, some of the information that subsequently got withdrawn–has already been discussed by government officials. I noted this filing [...]

As I noted the other day (and Josh Gerstein first reported), the government has chosen to withdraw two exhibits and redact discussion of a certain technology from another in the Thomas Drake case. Ellen Nakashima appears to reveal that those three documents were three of the five charged documents. According to people following the case, [...]