Former NSA executive turned whistleblower, Thomas Drake, will speak at Burning Books on Thursday, April 27. In 2005, Drake leaked classified information to a Baltimore Sun reporter about fraud and abuses of power at the NSA. Much of the information regarded the Trailblazer Project, which was a mass data analyzation program that was eventually linked to controversies over the NSA’s warrantless surveillance practices. In 2010 Drake was indicted for “willful retention of national defense information” under the Espionage act of 1917, among other charges. The charges were eventually dismissed. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden, perhaps the world’s most famous or infamous whistleblower, cited Drake as an inspiration for his own NSA whistleblowing, famously telling Al Jazeera news “If there hadn’t been a Thomas Drake, there couldn’t have been an Edward Snowden.”