A former NSA official reached a plea deal Friday to a misdemeanor for offering classified information to a journalist. Thomas Drake will have all other charges against him dropped—including several felonies—after federal prosecutors withdrew the counts. Last year, Drake’s leaks about classified government surveillance were considered a major threat to national security, NBC News reports. “It’s a massive face-saving retreat by the government,” a national security specialist with the Federation of American Scientists. In April 2010, Drake was indicted on ten counts by a federal grand jury for sending hundreds of emails full of classified NSA programs with journalist Siobahn Gorman, of the Baltimore Sun. Gorman currently works for the Wall Street Journal.
