[NYTr] US Searches ex-Justice Dept Lawyer's Home over Wiretap Leak

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Rick Kissell

Associated Press - Aug 6, 2007
(no URL supplied)

Report: Home Searched in Probe of Wiretap Leak

by The Associated Press

FBI agents searched the home of a former Justice Department lawyer last 
week in an effort to determine who leaked details of the warrantless 
eavesdropping program to the news media, Newsweek magazine reported 
yesterday, citing two anonymous legal sources.

The agents, who had obtained a classified search warrant, took Thomas 
Tamm's desktop computer, two laptops belonging to his children and some 
of Tamm's personal files, Newsweek reported.

The magazine granted anonymity to the two sources because they did not 
want to be identified talking about an open case.

Tamm left the department last year.

He had worked in the department's Office of Intelligence Policy and 
Review, a unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage 
targets, according to Newsweek.

In December 2005, the New York Times published a story exposing the 
Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program to eavesdrop on 
international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court 
warrants.

The eavesdropping was conducted without public knowledge and without 
court approval until January, when the program was put under the 
authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important 
program in a time of war," President Bush said four days after the 
Times report. "The fact that we're discussing this program is helping 
the enemy."