Wiretapping whistleblower speaks

A former Justice Department lawyer who said that he was a key source behind the revelation of President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program got a hero’s welcome on Capitol Hill on Tuesday at a gathering of whistleblowers demanding greater protection from Congress. 

“I grew up in a law enforcement family. I always thought I wore the white hat — truth, justice, the American way,” said Thomas Tamm, who had recently left Justice’s Office of Intelligence and Policy Review when he divulged the wiretapping program. “I didn’t like the fact that I might be doing something illegal.”

Tamm’s appearance at a panel discussion hosted by the Government Accountability Project was his first appearance at a public forum since December, when Newsweek identified him as being under criminal investigation for discussing the surveillance program with the New York Times.

“President Bush said it was a despicable and shameful act, and then the very next day ... he confirmed the fact that we were wiretapping Americans and American citizens without warrants,” Tamm said. He said the lawyers he worked with referred to the ultra-top-secret surveillance scheme simply as “The Program,” calling it “a kind of Kafkaesque reference.”

Tamm, whose home was searched by 18 agents in 2007, said he’s waiting for new appointees at the Justice Department to decide whether he should be prosecuted for illegally disclosing classified information.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on Tamm’s status or the broader investigation.

One privacy activist who joined Tamm on the panel said it was perverse that lawmakers granted immunity to telecommunications firms which cooperated with the program, while whistleblowers who brought it to light are still in jeopardy.

“The great tragedy today is the Congress has decided ... to immunize the companies that engaged in the illegal behavior instead of celebrating in the individuals that had the courage and the intelligence to stand up for the Constitution and the acts of Congress,” Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said.