A Whistleblowing Precedent

The charges of waste and poor performance leveled against the National Security Agency in a leak to the press by NSA employee Thomas Drake -- who on June 9 arrived at a plea bargain with federal prosecutors -- actually surfaced first in a 2004 Defense Department inspector general's report, according to the whistleblower advocacy and research group the Project on Government Oversight.

Released today for the first time after POGO filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the redacted IG's report said "the National Security Agency is inefficiently using resources to develop a digital network exploitation system that is not capable of fully exploiting the digital network intelligence available to analysts from the Global Information Network."

Drake, who faced a possible 35 years in prison for espionage, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of misusing a government computer, an outcome considered a victory by transparency groups.