12 Years Later, Warrantless Wiretaps Whistleblower Facing Misconduct Charges (usnews.com)

cold fjord writes: Former Justice Department attorney Thomas Tamm sparked an intense public debate about warrantless surveillance nearly a decade before Edward Snowden. Tamm tipped reporters in 2004 about the use of nonstandard warrantless procedures under the Bush administration for intercepting international phone calls and emails of Americans. New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau used Tamm's revelations to help them win a Pulitzer Prize. Barack Obama criticized the program and the Obama administration Justice Department announced in 2011 that it would not bring criminal charges against him. Unfortunately Tamm is now facing disciplinary hearings before the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel which prosecutes the D.C. Bar's disciplinary cases. Tamm is facing ethics charges that could result is his disbarment, revoking his law license. Tamm is alleged to have "failed to refer information in his possession that persons within the Department of Justice were violating their legal obligations to higher authority within the Department" and "revealed to a newspaper reporter confidences or secrets of his client, the Department of Justice." Tamm currently resides in Maryland where he is a public defender. The effect of the D.C. case on him there is unclear. Tamm's attorney, Georgetown University law professor Michael Frisch, says the delays seen in this case are not unusual in D.C., it can take years for matters to play out. Another of Frisch's clients, who exposed the interrogation of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, believes the prosecution is political persecution.

Comments

Here's something worth crowdfunding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone chip in $10, we'll pay his legal bills and whatever is left over goes to him, regardless of how things turn out.

Re:Here's something worth crowdfunding.

[Anonymous Coward]

He reported the wrongdoing to the press because he knew damn well that if he had reported the crimes to the same federal government that was DOING the crimes, it would have all been hushed-up and he would have likely been fired for some trumped-up reasons (allowing them to call him a "disgruntled employee" if he then went to the press later).

Re:Here's something worth crowdfunding.

[Obfuscant]

Somehow, by law, he was supposed to simultaneously blow the whistle on criminal activity, not participate in criminal activity, and not break the confidence of his "client" who was engaging in said criminal activity.

How is telling the people who are running the department you work for something they already know "break[ing] a confidence"?

As a lawyer, he had an ethical requirement to tell the people who were paying him that what they were doing was wrong, and not do it himself. That's breaking no confidences. Yes, it might result in him getting fired, but by not following the legal ethics rules he was breaking those rules and promoting the illegal activity. If the ethics were important, he'd not continue working there anyway.

Instead, he broke confidences by telling an outside party. That doesn't absolve him of the responsibility to tell his client of the problem.

It would appear that the ethical course of action would be to: 1) tell your employer/client, 2) quit because you really do value the ethics and not just pay lip service to them, and then 3) blow the whistle to the newspaper.

Proving once again that a whistleblower is almost ALWAYS screwed over no matter how they handle it.

This situation is a bit different than the vanilla whistleblower, in that he had an ethical obligation to discuss this issue with his employer/client because he is a lawyer. Had he been a run of the mill clerk, he'd not be in trouble with the bar association for breaking legal ethics. As a lawyer, he had a higher standard to keep, and didn't. Notice that it isn't the government acting against him, it is his professional organization.

Re:how few actually remember

[HiThere]

Concentration of media ownership.

In the 1960's most newpapers were independent of outside owners. In 201x I can't think of a single major news source that is independent. The net, which should be the replacement, is so splintered and filled with untrustworthy sources that most people only pay attention to sites that they already agree with. (We were warned that this was coming back in, I think it was, the 1980's, but nobody took it seriously, even though newspapers were already being bought by corporations that had no, or minimal, interest in the news business and the web had already started to separate into echo chambers. I ignored it myself. I was opposed to the newspaper acquisitions because I was against centralized controls on principle, not because I could see where it would lead.)

I didn't realize just what the purpose of this was until the main local newspaper was bought by a liquor company. This was clearly not an investment for capital gain, as the paper was losing money. It could have been made barely profitable with careful work, but it couldn't ever repay the cost paid to buy it. So there was clearly some other reason. It took a few years to be certain what the purpose was, but they were clearly sculpting the news. Not lying anymore than before, but selecting which stories to push and which to let die.

And this was being done all over the country. Now even the small local news only sheet has been bought by a chain, and only the neighborhood newspaper hasn't been purchased. One of the corporations buying newspapers was Heublein, Inc., but they didn't print any more liquor (or fewer) ads after they bought the paper. And they sure didn't buy them as money makers.