Former NSA Official Says Mismanagement Continues At Spy Agency

Washington Times
July 20, 2011

Former National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas A. Drake says continuing mismanagement and malfeasance have turned the nation’s premier electronic spy agency into “the Enron of the U.S. intelligence community.”

Mr. Drake, whose federal criminal case concluded last week, said in an interview with The Washington Times that he thinks management failures at NSA related to electronic surveillance and other issues that he protested — first through internal channels and then by sharing unclassified data with a Baltimore Sun reporter — are continuing.

“The agency never even accepted the basis for the [Pentagon inspector general’s] investigation in the first place,” he said, referring to the internal audit launched after he and others at NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters in Maryland complained about contract fraud and mismanagement.

He compared the agency to the Texas-based energy trading giant Enron Corp., which went bankrupt in 2001 and became a symbol of corporate fraud and corruption.

Mr. Drake was sentenced to one year’s probation and community service last week after the government’s 10 felony counts against him were withdrawn. He instead pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense of exceeding authorized access to a government computer.

The judge called the prosecutors’ handling of the case “unconscionable” because it took 2½ years to charge Mr. Drake and another 14 months to bring him to trial before all the major charges were dropped at the last minute.

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