Five former government officials quietly filed a federal lawsuit last week seeking more than $100 million for alleged retaliation after blowing the whistle on what they viewed as wasteful spending and disregard for civil liberties at the National Security Agency.

The targets of the suit are the agencies and authorities they hold responsible for a years-long ordeal during which they were threatened with prison time and had their homes raided and property confiscated.

“The defendants falsely and fraudulently used the pretense of tracking... leaks to attack, harass, and intimidate the plaintiffs,” the lawsuit charges, claiming violations of the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, intentional infliction of emotional distress and malicious prosecution.

They’re unlikely to get a payout anytime soon, but the five view the effort in part as a way to highlight the plight of whistleblowers in general, according to their attorney Larry Klayman, who is separately suing to end the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S. call records.

“These people tried to do it the right way, and now they’re fighting back, not only for themselves but for all whistleblowers,” he says. “The moral of the story is why [Edward] Snowden fled the country.”

The plaintiffs are former House intelligence committee staffer Diane Roark and retired NSA employees William Binney, Ed Loomis, J. Kirk Wiebe and Thomas Drake. Before being put under investigation they had raised internal concerns about dragnet surveillance and about a more than $1 billion and now defunct program called Trailblazer.

The lawsuit alleges authorities used The New York Times’ 2005 report exposing post-9/11 warrantless wiretaps as an excuse to go after the group. The primary source of the Times report, former Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm, identified himself in late 2008 and ultimately was not prosecuted.

Drake, who says he’s not yet ready to discuss the lawsuit, had spoken with a Baltimore Sun reporter about alleged misuse of funds, and in 2011 pleaded guilty to exceeding authorized use of an agency computer, a misdemeanor. Roark refused to plead guilty to lying to investigators, and like the others avoided being charged.

The group traces its troubles to concern about the costly Trailblazer program. Shortly after 9/11 Binney, Loomis and Wiebe retired after more than three decades each at the NSA and together with Roark -- and in cooperation with Drake -- filed a complaint with the Defense Department’s inspector general in 2002, focusing mostly on alleged waste rather than objection to mass surveillance.

Roark also attempted to raise constitutional concerns about the increasingly broad collection with the Justice Department and the leaders in Congress, and the top judges of the U.S. Supreme Court and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to no avail.

After the Times’ report the group was hounded by authorities who suspected them of involvement, including dramatic raids and confiscation of property.

Snowden’s bombshell disclosures to the press in 2013 inspired the group to be increasingly vocal about their concern for constitutional rights and whistleblower protection. Binney, Drake and Wiebe held a news conference at the National Press Club to defend Snowden's decision to leak documents illegally and flee the country, pointing at their own experiences.

“I don't know what other choice he had," Binney said.

“The five of us, we are the canaries in the coal mine,” Roark said in a 2013 interview with PBS. “We never did anything wrong. All we did was oppose this program. And for that, they just ran over us.”

In the interview, Roark said “it was a massive stress to be under investigation for six or seven years. And to never know if you're going to end up in jail or spend your whole retirement on legal fees and then go broke, that's a massive stress.”

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The lawsuit names as defendants seven former officials, including retired NSA Directors Michael Hayden and Keith Alexander, the FBI, the NSA and the Justice Department. It seeks more than $100 million “because of defendants’ callous and reckless indifference and malicious acts,” in addition to millions more for lost wages and attorney fees.

The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment on the lawsuit.