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act He faces a maximum of one year in federal prison, though prosecutors said Friday that they would not oppose a "noncustodial" sentence — meaning one that does not include confinement. He faced more than 30 years in prison under the original 10-count indictment.

Drake, who had a top-secret clearance as an NSA employee, was indicted last year for retaining classified information, which prosecutors said he gave to then-Baltimore Sun reporter Siobhan Gorman between 2006 and 2007. Gorman wrote a series of articles about waste and mismanagement at NSA; she now works for the Wall Street Journal.

But Drake maintains that the information he gave Gorman was not classified, and that he handed the classified information over to investigators as part of a whistle-blowing investigation into wasteful agency programs.

He was never charged with leaking information, though his prosecution is widely viewed as a message from the Obama administration to discourage leaks. It is one of five cases being pursued by the federal government in court, and part of a larger strategy to shut down unauthorized disclosures of information, some open-government advocates said.

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