As bmaz reported while I was looking at flowers in Northern MI, POGO liberated via FOIA the Inspector General report central to the Thomas Drake case. While much of the report is redacted (except for, perhaps unsurprisingly, a number of comments about limitations to ThinThread that have been decontextualized by redactions), a few interesting details [...]

Thanks to POGO’s FOIA release here, we now know that not only was the persecution of Tom Drake by the DOJ completely bogus and vindictive, Tom Drake was bloody well right about TRAILBLAZER versus THIN THREAD to start with. Who couldda predicted?

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? [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

As Josh Gerstein just reported, the government has decided to withdraw some evidence against Thomas Drake rather than come up with CIPA substitutions that would give Drake the ability to defend himself. At issue is “NSA’s targeting of a particular telecommunications technology,” which the government wants to hide. To avoid mentioning it, they are now [...]