Report: Home Searched In Probe of Wiretap Leak

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Associated Press
Monday, August 6, 2007

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."