He entered the U.S. Air Force in 1979, becoming an Airborne Voice Processing Specialist, with a fluency in German, and went on ELINT (electronic intelligence) missions.
[16] In 2006 he was reassigned to the National Defense University,[16] where he became the NSA Chair and an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Sciences within the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF).
Accepting the SAAII award he said,[14] with references to an 1857 speech of Frederick Douglass: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the NSA desired new tools to collect intelligence from the growing flood of information pouring out of the new digital networks like the Internet.
[10][22] He became part of the "minority" that favored ThinThread for several reasons,[22] including its theoretical ability to protect the privacy of US individuals while gathering intelligence.
[25] Drake worked his way through the legal processes that are prescribed for government employees who believe that questionable activities are taking place in their departments.
[16] In addition, Roark made an effort to inform Vice President Dick Cheney's legal counsel David Addington, who had been a Republican staff colleague of hers on the committee in the 1980s.
[28] In a 2011 New Yorker article, journalist Jane Mayer wrote that Drake felt the NSA was committing serious crimes against the American people, on a level worse than what President Nixon had done in the 1970s.
[21] In November 2005, Drake contacted Siobhan Gorman of The Baltimore Sun newspaper, sending her emails through Hushmail and discussing various topics.
[10] Judge Richard Bennett later ruled that "there is no evidence that Reporter A relied upon any allegedly classified information found in Mr. Drake's house in her articles".
[36] In July 2007, armed FBI agents raided the homes of Roark, Binney, and Wiebe, the same people who had filed the complaint with the DoD Inspector General in 2002.
Diane Roark, Binney, Wiebe, and Loomis (the complainants to the DoD IG in 2002) were also allegedly listed as "unindicted co-conspirators".
The five documents in question were referred to as "What a Success",[39] "the Regular Meetings", "Volume is our Friend", "Trial and Testing", and "Collections Sites".
[40] "What a Success" was declassified a few months after Drake was indicted, and should never have been classified in the first place, according to an official complaint filed by J. William Leonard, a former director of the Information Security Oversight Office.
Drake's team also argued that the latter three of the five named documents were part of a collection of thousands of unclassified papers related to the DoD Inspector General Report (mentioned above).
[9] The false statements charge was filed in relation to the FBI's questioning of Drake without a lawyer present in the initial stages of the investigation when he was cooperating with them.
[21] Federal Judge Richard D. Bennett was responsible for hearing handling the case, and initially set trial for June 2011.
[49][50] The Drake case has been written about in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Agence France-Press, Newsweek, Wired, the Washingtonian.com, the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News, Politico, and elsewhere.
"[53] In the spring of 2011, the prosecution made several moves to restrict the normally open proceedings of a jury trial in a United States courtroom, as reported by Gerstein at Politico and others.
[60] Referring to Siobhan Gorman's Baltimore Sun news stories, the government legally pleaded that the "newspaper articles are unduly prejudicial.
At the July sentencing hearing the presiding judge, Richard D. Bennett of Maryland's Federal District Court, issued harsh words for the government, saying that it was "unconscionable" to charge a defendant, two years after his home was searched, with a list of serious crimes that could have resulted in 35 years in prison, only to drop the 10 counts of the indictment on the eve of trial.
He noted that Drake had been financially devastated, spending $82,000 on his defense, losing his $154,600 job at the NSA and his pension, and being fired from his university teaching position.
[62] Drake appeared on The Daily Show on August 6, 2012, to talk about the history of his case,[63] and in September sent an audio message of support to CryptoParty.
[67] Drake has become an activist against the surveillance state, frequently giving interviews and speaking at events such as Restore the Fourth and Stand Up For Truth.
[68][69] One of the themes of his speeches and interviews is a "privacy exercise" as follows "Put your entire life in a box, your documents, bank accounts, your passwords, everything—and give it to a complete stranger—a fellow American for safekeeping.
[70] In a September 2013 interview, Drake reaffirmed his belief that the problems of the NSA are so chronic and systemic that the only solution would be to completely dismantle and subsequently rebuild the entire organization.
[72][73] On November 10, 2015, Drake appeared on a PEN American Center panel at the Newseum about "Secret Sources: Whistleblowers, National Security and Free Expression.
[76] Drake is one of four individuals in the history of the United States who have been charged specifically with "willful retention" of "national defense" information under 18 U.S.C. § 793(e).
The second prosecution was of Samuel Loring Morison in 1985, a Navy analyst who sold satellite photographs to Jane's Defence Weekly; he was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.
Having an analogous theme as the Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour, which portrays similar treatment of Edward Snowden, Silenced has been the official selection and recipient of several awards from multiple film festivals[79] even before its release to major cable networks in March 2015.
Also in 2014, Drake's involvement with Thinthread, his subsequent indictment, etc., along with others associated with his activities (Roark, Binney, Wiebe, Loomis), and Snowden were featured in a PBS documentary, "United States of Secrets".