NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Exposes the Truth Behind Surveillance and Corruption

Change Agents with Andy Stumpf

IRONCLAD

Society & Culture

4.9 • 648 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode, Andy sits down with Thomas Drake—a former senior executive at the NSA, Air Force veteran, software expert, whistleblower. While at the NSA, Drake exposed serious issues including multi-billion-dollar fraud, intelligence failures, and a secret post-9/11 mass surveillance program. He supported the use of ThinThread, a cost-effective and privacy-protecting tool, but it was rejected in favor of Trailblazer—a more expensive program lacking privacy safeguards. In 2005, Drake anonymously shared unclassified information about NSA misconduct with a journalist. In 2010, he was charged with 10 felony counts under the Espionage Act but the case collapsed, and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. That same year, he received the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling. Change Agents is an IRONCLAD Original Watch Change Agents: Black Project, a 4 part mini series, weekly on Tuesdays or Binge all 4 episodes of now by becoming a member on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmK3k1U3D3fqPZWcnAaa-Vg/join. Sponsors: Firecracker Farm Use code IRONCLAD to get 15% off your first order at https://firecracker.farm/ MTNTOUGH Go to ⁠https://mtntough.com⁠ and enter code CHANGEAGENTS to receive 40% OFF - a savings of about $100 off your MTNTOUGH+ annual subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wait a minute. You're saying that if you go to Congress with what you want to do, which they end up doing its secret anyways, they're going to say no. I'm saying, why would they say no? Well, because I was going to basically set aside the Fourth Amendment. Exident conditions. That's what I was told. Exigent conditions apply.
0:22.6	How can I help? How can I be useful in ending needless suffering?
0:25.6	Do not be afraid of work that has no end.
0:29.6	We have to organize a social movement.
0:34.6	We have an opportunity to lead by example,
0:39.1	versus just talking, hot air.
0:42.5	I think the more people in this fight,
0:44.6	the more we grow,
0:45.9	eventually it could change.
0:47.1	The people are the ones that can make the change.
0:49.0	The people are the ones that can make the change.
1:03.7	Yeah. I know we're going to be talking about the NSA.
1:13.6	I think there are substantial misconceptions about what the NSA is, what they were formed to do, their operational role in our intelligence umbrella. So before we talk about how you ended up there, can you
1:18.8	unpack from your understanding? Why does the NSA exist? What was their, what was the objective
1:24.4	in creating it? What is their primary role? Maybe we'll just start there with a pin in it.
1:29.1	We have to go back to the early years of the Cold War. Okay. Post-World War II,
1:35.8	NSA was literally created by the stroke of a pen, Perry U.S. Truman, 1952 in the fall. It was not
1:43.7	legislation. It was not legislation.
1:44.9	It was not part of the Nassarid Act in 1947, which is one of the common misconceptions.
1:51.3	So, and it was also a secret signing way off the books.
1:57.6	It was never, it was never made public at the time.
2:00.0	You know, in fact, the joke with NSA for decades
	...

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