The Obama Justice Department didn’t care in our cases that many of us had gone to the press with evidence of governmental waste, fraud, abuse and illegality. We all faced long prison sentences—long enough that we could have died in prison. Indeed, NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake faced 35 years for blowing the whistle on the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. The case against him fell apart in the end, and all felony charges were dropped. I faced 45 years after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program. I took a plea to violating the IIPA and served 23 months in a federal prison. Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for providing WikiLeaks with evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq.