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Title: Bush Admin On The Hunt: FBI Raided Fmr DOJ Lawyer's Home In Search For Wiretapping Leaker
Source:
Newsweek
URL Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20121795/site/newsweek/
Published: Aug 5, 2007
Author: Michael Isikoff
Post Date: 2007-08-05 14:48:34 by robin
Keywords: None
Views: 186
Comments: 13
Govt. Looks for Leaker on Warrantless Wiretaps Newsweek Aug. 13, 2007 issue - 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. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.") A veteran federal prosecutor who left DOJ last year, Tamm worked at OIPR during a critical period in 2004 when senior Justice officials first strongly objected to the surveillance program. Those protests led to a crisis that March when, according to recent Senate testimony, then A.G. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and others threatened to resign, prompting Bush to scale the program back. Tamm, said one of the legal sources, had shared concerns about he program's legality, but it was unclear whether he actively participated in the internal DOJ protest. The FBI raid on Tamm's home comes when Gonzales himself is facing criticism for allegedly misleading Congress by denying there had been "serious disagreement" within Justice about the surveillance program. The A.G. last week apologized for "creating confusion," but Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy said he is weighing asking Justice's inspector general to review Gonzales's testimony. The raid also came while the White House and Congress were battling over expanding NSA wiretapping authority in order to plug purported "surveillance gaps." James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the raid was "amazing" and shows the administration's misplaced priorities: using FBI agents to track down leakers instead of processing intel warrants to close the gaps. A Justice spokesman declined to comment. -Michael Isikoff
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#1. To: All, aristeides, ghostdogtxn, Red Jones, Zipporah, Dakmar, Cynicom, palo verde, ... (#0)
Ron Paul for President
Sounds just like the Gestapo.
Plenty of energy and resources to be directed against any whistleblowers, but not the evildoers. Reminds me of the 2 border agents (with 12 years of exemplary service) the feds went after, granting immunity to the drug dealer caught red handed with $1+ million in drugs, by these fine agents (who now sit in prison - and one has been attacked in prison).
Ron Paul for President
Geez. You point out that there are Traitors like Shrubya who are circumventing the Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Stormtroopers come to arrest you. Vat a country! ZIEG HEIL!!!! and Fuck You Shrub! The only Freedoms I've lost have been at the hands of TheStateInc, not terrarists. The onyl terrarists work in the District of Criminals.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition It does have a "Night of The Long Knives" flavor to it. Right down to the cheering sycophants in the 28% gang who want the leaker strung up.
"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price." Vir Cotto, Babylon 5
Possibly, but this time I think it's just about smashing the opposition - at the same time the head of the Justice Dept is denying before Congress that any of this ever was going on.
Ron Paul for President
I'll be surprised if a jury convicts this guy. A jury in suburban Washington is likely to include a lot of civil servants and members of their families.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
Whatever evidence they found, it's easy to imagine powerful defenses that he could use. They would be particularly persuasive to the kinds of juries found in suburban D.C. He's a distinguished lawyer, and he can probably get high-powered legal assistance.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
Lord Halifax's observation about James II (noted on p. 60 of Vol. 2 of the Everyman's Library edition of Macaulay's History of England) applies equally to Bush and his treatment of FISA; "If laws are binding on you, observe the law which now exists. If laws are not binding on you, it is idle to offer us a law as a security."
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
I heard a caller on C-SPAN state the obvious and she knew what she was saying, "The F in FISA stands for foreign." She had a few more good zingers but I remember that one clearly.
#2. To: robin (#0)
#3. To: Sodie Pop (#2)
#4. To: robin, BTP HOLDINGS, LODWICK, FERRET MIKE (#0)
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
"There is no 'legitimate' Corporation by virtue of it's very legal definition and purpose."
-- IndieTx
#5. To: Sodie Pop (#2)
Sounds just like the Gestapo.
#6. To: IndieTX (#4)
The only Freedoms I've lost have been at the hands of TheStateInc, not terrarists.
#7. To: orangedog (#5)
Tamm, said one of the legal sources, had shared concerns about he program's legality, but it was unclear whether he actively participated in the internal DOJ protest.
#8. To: robin (#0)
#9. To: robin (#0)
#10. To: ghostdogtxn (#9)
#11. To: aristeides (#10)
#12. To: ghostdogtxn (#11)
#13. To: aristeides (#12)
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