NSA releases disputed e-mail prominent in Drake prosecution

07/23/12: Secrecy News reports the National Security Agency Friday released a declassified email message entitled “What a Wonderful Success” that had been used as the basis for a felony count against former NSA official Thomas Drake in 2010, who was charged with unlawful retention of classified information, including that message.  Although all of the felony counts against Drake were eventually dismissed, the “What a Wonderful Success” e-mail remains controversial because it has been challenged as an exemplar of reckless overclassification.  The document is “an innocuous, internal communication that never should have been classified in the first place,” according to a petition filed last May by J. William Leonard, the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office.