US spy to face charges in media leak case Monday

WASHINGTON — A former senior official in the top-secret US National Security Agency will face a slew of charges Monday over the leaking of classified information to a newspaper reporter.Thomas Drake, 54, is accused of illegally retaining classified information, obstructing justice and making false statements, charges for which he faces up to more than 30 years behind bars.He was charged in a 10-count indictment in April of last year.A high-ranking employee at the NSA between 2001 and 2008, Drake is alleged to have provided information to a reporter for a series of articles published between February 2006 and November 2007 about the NSA and its activities.The information concerned the Signals Intelligence programs (SIGINT), which involve capturing and processing foreign communications.While the indictment did not identify the reporter, she is believed to be Siobhan Gorman, who now works for The Wall Street Journal.According to the indictment, Drake left the agency's Fort Meade, Maryland headquarters in 2006 to work at the National Defense University in Washington but remained an NSA employee.His security clearance was suspended in November 2007 and he resigned from the NSA in April 2008.Using Hushmail, a secure email service, Drake allegedly exchanged hundreds of emails with "Reporter A," and they met on six occasions in the Washington area, according to the indictment.He used the email service to transmit both classified and unclassified documents never intended to be made public and then allegedly shredded them and lied to federal agents about his conduct, according to prosecutors.President Barack Obama's administration abandoned plans to charge Drake with espionage last year.On Sunday, officials said they would forgo using some documents as evidence, as the judge denied requests to even have them summarized to jurors."The government will not rely on the classified information related to that technology as part of its proof, nor will it indicate to the jury that the documents found in the defendant?s hom

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