The Obama administration agreed to drop its controversial Espionage Act case against former National Security Agency (NSA) employee Thomas Drake, according to reports yesterday. Instead, Drake will plead guilty to exceeding authorized use of a computer, a misdemeanor. The deal calls for no jail time or fine, with up to one year of probation.

Drake, whose case was profiled last month in the New Yorker, had been accused of taking classified documents detailing NSA waste and privacy concerns. Drake maintained that he had never released any classified information, and that he raised his concerns through official channels before communicating with a reporter after they were ignored. For his actions, Drake received the 2011 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling.

In the OMB Watch report Assessing Progress Toward a 21st Century Right to Know, released in March, we called the Obama administration's "aggressive prosecution of leakers … antithetical to the openness policies embodied in our recommendations."

The administration's use of the dangerous Espionage Act of 1917 in this case was especially appalling. Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, which represented Drake on whistleblower issues, commented:

Whistleblowers are not spies. The Espionage Act is a particularly heinous tool that should never be used to cover up government wrongdoing and punish whistleblowers that expose it. This sends a message to the Justice Department to abandon its perverted strategy of prosecuting whistleblowers under the Espionage Act.