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:
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.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.
(H/T: American Thinker)
