Administration Pursues Charges Against Another Whistleblower

Another whistleblower is facing charges brought by this administration -- one that has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined. Thomas Tamm, a DOJ lawyer during the Bush era, exposed the NSA's super-secret domestic surveillance program, whose authorization ran directly from the Attorney General to the Chief Judge of the FISA Court. His whistleblowing led to a Pulitzer for the New York Times. The information Tamm gave to NYT reporters detailed something referred to only as "the program." The two-person approval process eliminated much of the paper trail and allowed the NSA to perform warrantless domestic surveillance. Colleagues of Tamm's at the DOJ's Office of Intelligence Programs and Review even told Tamm this was "probably illegal." As Cyrus Farivar points out, Tamm has spent several years being investigated, but, so far, nothing has stuck. In 2007, his house was raided by 18 FBI agents who seized every electronic device they could find in Tamm's house and pressured him to plead guilty to espionage charges. Two years later, Tamm received the "Ridenhour Truth-Telling" prize. Two years after that, the government dropped the espionage charges. But the government isn't done with Tamm. In what it likely views as a wrist slap, it's bringing ethics charges against Tamm for bypassing the "proper channels" to expose government wrongdoing. Basically, it's a bar complaint -- the government's last-ditch attempt to make Tamm pay for making it look bad.

Respondent became aware that there were some surveillance applications that were given special treatment. The applications could be signed only by the Attorney General and were made only to the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The existence of these applications and this process was secret. Respondent learned that these applications involved special intelligence obtained from something referred to as "the program." When he inquired about "the program" of other members of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, he was told by his colleagues that it was probably illegal. Even though Respondent believed that an agency of the Department of Justice was involved in illegal conduct, he did not refer the matter to higher authority within the Department.

For more than a decade, the government has gone after Tamm. All it's left with is this: a threadbare claim that Tamm's decision to bring this information to the press was a breach of trust. His "client" -- the DOJ -- was not handled in accordance with its "Rules of Professional Conduct." Still, it's more than the government actually needed to do. It could have used the opportunity to shut down a program that was considered "probably illegal" by other DOJ lawyers. Instead, it shot the only messenger it could: the person exposing the wrongdoing.

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