By DAVID CARR, NYT The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance âwhistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,â has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers. The Espionage Act, enacted back in 1917 to punish those who gave aid to our enemies, was used three times in all the prior administrations to bring cases against government officials accused of providing classified information to the media. It has been used six times since the current president took office. [snip] In case after case, the Espionage Act has been deployed as a kind of ad hoc Official Secrets Act, which is not a law that has ever found traction in America, a place where the peopleâs right to know is viewed as superseding the governmentâs right to hide its business. In the most recent case, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who became a Democratic staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged under the Espionage Act with leaking information to journalists about other C.I.A. officers, some of whom were involved in the agencyâs interrogation program, which included waterboarding [snip] âI have been following all of these case, and itâs not like they are instances of government employees leaking the location of secret nuclear sites,â Mr. Tapper said. âThese are classic whistle-blower cases that dealt with questionable behavior by government officials or its agents acting in the name of protecting America.â [snip] In one of the more remarkable examples of the administrationâs aggressive approach, Thomas A. Drake, a former employee of the National Security Agency, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act last year and faced a possible 35 years in prison. His crime? When his agency was about to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a software program bought from the private sector intended to monitor digital data, he spoke with a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. He suggested an internally developed program that cost significantly less would be more effective and not violate privacy in the way the product from the vendor would. (He turned out to be right, by the way.) He was charged with 10 felony counts that accused him of lying to investigators and obstructing justice. Last summer, the case against him collapsed, and he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor, of misuse of a government computer. Jesselyn Radack, the director for national security and human rights at the Government Accountability Project, was one of the lawyers who represented him. âThe Obama administration has been quite hypocritical about its promises of openness, transparency and accountability,â she said. âAll presidents hate leaks, but pursuing whistle-blowers as spies is heavy-handed and beyond the scope of the law.â Mark Corallo, who served under Attorney General John D. Ashcroft during the Bush administration, told Adam Liptak of The New York Times this month that he was âsort of shockedâ by the number of leak prosecutions under President Obama. âWe would have gotten hammered for it,â he said. [snip] And itâs worth pointing out that the administrationâs emphasis on secrecy comes and goes depending on the news. Reporters were immediately and endlessly briefed on the âsecretâ operation that successfully found and killed Osama bin Laden. And the drone program in Pakistan and Afghanistan comes to light in a very organized and systematic way every time there is a successful mission. There is plenty of authorized leaking going on, but this particular boat leaks from the top. Leaks from the decks below, especially ones that might embarrass the administration, have been dealt with very differently. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/b...ases-media-equation.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper