was entrusted with some of the government's most important secrets. He had a Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance, a level above Top Secret. Government agents had probed Tamm's background, his friends and associates, and determined him trustworthy.
It's easy to see why: he comes from a family of high-ranking officials. During his childhood, he played under the desk of J. Edgar Hoover, and as an adult, he enjoyed a long and successful career as a prosecutor. Now gray-haired, 56 and fighting a paunch, Tamm prides himself on his personal rectitude. He has what his 23-year-old son, Terry, calls a "passion for justice." For that reason, there was one secret he says he felt duty-bound to reveal.
In the spring of 2004, Tamm had just finished a yearlong stint at a unit handling wiretaps of suspected terrorists and spies—a unit so sensitive that employees are required to put their hands through a biometric scanner to check their fingerprints upon entering. While there, Tamm stumbled upon the existence of a highly classified program that seemed to be eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. The unit had special rules that appeared to be hiding the NSA activities from a panel of federal judges who are required to approve such surveillance. When Tamm started asking questions, his supervisors told him to drop the subject. He says one volunteered that "the program" (as it was commonly called within the office) was "probably illegal."
Tamm agonized over what to do. He tried to raise the issue with a former colleague working for the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the friend, wary of discussing what sounded like government secrets, shut down their conversation. For weeks, Tamm couldn't sleep. The idea of lawlessness at the Justice Department angered him. Finally, one day during his lunch hour, Tamm ducked into a subway station near the U.S. District Courthouse on Pennsylvania Avenue. He headed for a pair of adjoining pay phones partially concealed by large, illuminated Metro maps. Tamm had been eyeing the phone booths on his way to work in the morning. Now, as he slipped through the parade of midday subway riders, his heart was pounding, his body trembling. Tamm felt like a spy. After looking around to make sure nobody was watching, he picked up a phone and called The New York Times.
You get the picture promoted by Newsweek here? A high level official who decides for himself that a top secret program is illegal wrestles with his conscience over what to do...until he leaks it to the New York Times. Hogwash. The motivation, in Tamm's own words, is much simpler. He is a BDS loon as chronicled by your humble correspondent here in NewsBusters way back in August 2007:
Anybody who reads Web forums dedicated to current events is familiar with the phenomenom of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) in which leftwingers rant wildly about the supposed crimes of the EVIL Bush regime. Most of the time those postings can be written off as just another case of the left having mental problems handling the fact that they do not control the executive branch of government. However, we might now have a case in which BDS has the positive effect of actually causing a high level government leaker of super secret information to expose himself. The story about the alleged leaker to the press of the FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) program details was written up in the August 13 Newsweek article, Looking For a Leaker:
The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer. The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants.
What this Newsweek story by Michael Isikoff doesn't mention is what might have caused the FBI to be suspicious of the alleged leaker---BDS blog postings by Thomas Tamm. One such BDS posting was made by a reader identifying himself as Thomas Tamm in the New York Times The Caucus political blog. The post was a sarcastic comment at 11:42 AM in the November 29, 2006 edition of The Caucus over the possibility of civil war in Iraq:
It is not yet a civil war. It won’t be a civil war until there are two armies, one from the north, one from the south. The two armies must wear blue and gray respectively, and must be led by U.S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Only then will it meet our definition of a civil war.
---Posted by Thomas Tamm
Even more revealing is this BDS post to Eric Alterman by Thomas Tamm in the far left Media Matters:
Correspondence Corner:Name: Thomas M. Tamm
Hometown: Potomac, Maryland USADear Eric: Is not the administration's position that they would not permit the U.S. Attorney to prosecute a Congressional Contempt referral an implicit admission that they allow politics to impact prosecutions? They are admitting that they would interfere with the independent judgment of a prosecutor on a specific case. I suggest that this is precisely what the firings of the U.S. Attorneys are ultimately about. Yes, they serve at the pleasure of the president, but they do not prosecute at the pleasure of the president. The White House is guilty of taking the blindfold off lady justice, not just covering her breasts. I am a former DOJ lawyer, for what that is worth.
If it turns out that Thomas M. Tamm is the FISA leaker, then a good case could be made that BDS postings on the web might have been his undoing. Ironically this would not be the first time a high government official illegally releasing top secret information revealed himself via web postings. Robert Hannsen, the FBI agent convicted of selling secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia, raised suspicions about himself when he posted explicit information about his sex life on Internet chat rooms. Perhaps this FISA leak case will be the second time that web postings would have been the undoing of a government official illegally releasing top secret information. In the case of Hannsen his motivation was sex, in the current FISA case it just might be irrational BDS that undid the leaker.
The New York Times Opinionator blog even credited your humble correspondent with identifying Tamm's motivation right after my original NewsBusters story was published last year:
And P.J. Gladnick at NewsBusters gleefully posits that comments apparently posted by Tamm on liberal Web sites may have led to his unmasking.
Meanwhile Tamm doesn't exactly sound like someone acting with a clear conscience. Perhaps he is just now realizing that he let his inner loon take him over to the detriment of national security as you see in this Newsweek description:
At times during his interviews with NEWSWEEK, Tamm would stare into space for minutes, silently wrestling with how to answer questions. One of the most difficult concerned the personal ramifications of his choice. "I didn't think through what this could do to my family," he says.
Um, Thomas, it also looks like you didn't think through what this could do to your country. Enjoy having that on your conscience for the rest of your life. And say hello to your Justice Department colleague and fellow loon, Robert Hannsen.
UPDATE: Our own Par for the Course has found some great information on Thomas Tamm that was conveniently overlooked by Newsweek from FEC Individual Contributor Search.
TAMM, THOMAS MARK
POTOMAC, MD 20854
US ATTORNEYS OFFICE/ATTORNEYDNC Services Corporation/Democratic National Committee
09/17/2004 300.00
Gee! Do you suppose that politics just possibly could have been a major motivation to leak the FISA program details?
