Thomas Tamm (born 1952) is a public defender in

Washington County, Maryland Washington County is located in the western part of the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 census, the population was 154,705. Its county seat is Hagerstown. Washington County was the first county in the United States to be named for the ...

. He formerly worked as an attorney in the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

(USDOJ)

Office of Intelligence Policy and Review The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) was a staff agency within the United States Department of Justice. It was responsible for handling all Justice Department requests for surveillance authorizations under the terms of the 1978 Forei ...

during 2004 when senior Justice officials responded to the warrantless NSA surveillance concerning eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. He was an anonymous

whistleblower A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

to ''

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'', making the initial disclosures which led to reporters winning

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

s in 2006. Although Maryland agreed to drop ethics charges against him in 2009 relating to those disclosures, and the USDOJ announced it had dropped its investigation in 2011, the D.C. Office of Bar Counsel announced in January 2016 that it had brought disciplinary charges against Tamm relating to those events. Despite some controversy with respect to politicization of that office and similar charges being brought to silence attorney whistleblowers especially beginning in 2014, Tamm in March 2016 agreed to public censure by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in order to allow him to proceed with his life and career.

Background

The son of a former assistant director of the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

, nephew of another former FBI assistant director who became a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the District of Columbia Circuit ( Edward Allen Tamm), and brother of another career FBI agent, Tamm attended

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

and graduated in 1974. After graduating from

Georgetown Law School The Georgetown University Law Center (Georgetown Law) is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment and t ...

and being admitted to the bar, Tamm joined the state's attorney's office, and after gaining additional experience, joined the United States Department of Justice's Capital Case Unit, where he litigated death penalty cases. He eventually joined the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, where he was liaison with the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court. A ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' article on December 16, 2005 exposing the warrantless NSA surveillance for the first time was based on his initial tip-offs. Reporters

James Risen James Risen (born April 27, 1955) is an American journalist for ''The Intercept''. He previously worked for ''The New York Times'' and before that for ''Los Angeles Times''. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government ...

and

Eric Lichtblau Eric Lichtblau (born 1965) is an American journalist, reporting for ''The New York Times'' in the Washington bureau, as well as the ''Los Angeles Times'', ''Time'' magazine, ''The New Yorker'', and the CNN network's investigative news unit. He ha ...

won a Pulitzer prize for that reporting in 2006.https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/pre-snowden-whistleblower-thomas-tamm-faces-misconduct-charges-12-years-later In 2007, FBI agents raided Tamm's house. on suspicion of his involvement in leaking the details, but it was not until 2008 – online on December 13 and then in the December 22 issue of ''

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'' – that his role was confirmed and Tamm began speaking out publicly. On April 26, 2011, after inauguration of President Barack Obama (who had criticized the program) and a lengthy criminal investigation, the Justice Department announced that it would be dropping its investigation of Tamm and would not file charges.

Media Exposure in 2012-2013

On August 22, 2012 ''The New York Times'' published an ''Op-doc'' (a forum of short documentaries produced by independent filmmakers), produced by Laura Poitras and entitled, ''The Program''. The producer characterized it as preliminary work that would be included in a documentary planned for release in 2013, as the final part of the trilogy based on interviews with William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

, who also became a whistleblower and described the details of the

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project that he helped to design. Binney stated that the program he worked on, the facility being built at Bluffdale, Utah, had been designed for foreign espionage, but in 2001 was converted to spying on citizens in the United States, prompting concerns by him and others that the actions were illegal and unconstitutional, which led to disclosures. On October 29, 2012 the

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

heard arguments regarding the constitutionality of the amendments to the

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign po ...

(FISA) that were used to authorize the creation of such facilities and justify such actions. The determination of the court was not unanimous in ''James R. Clapper, Jr., Director Of National Intelligence, et al., Petitioners v. Amnesty International USA et al.'', as Justice Breyer filed a dissenting opinion, with whom Justice Ginsburg, Justice Sotomayor, and Justice Kagan joined. In December 2013, the Public Broadcasting System's Frontline documentary series interviewed Tamm concerning the FISA Court.

Bar Discipline

In January, 2016, the District of Columbia Office of Disciplinary Counsel announced, first to the

National Law Journal ''The National Law Journal'' (NLJ) is an American legal periodical founded in 1978. The NLJ was created by Jerry Finkelstein, who envisioned it as a "sibling newspaper" of the ''New York Law Journal''. Originally a tabloid-sized weekly newspape ...

, that in December it had filed ethics charges against Tamm (a member of the D.C. Bar since 1978) as a result of an investigation that it claimed dated back to 2009, for violating the confidences of his then-client the U.S. Department of Justice. Whistleblower lawyers analogized this to the ongoing disciplinary case brought in 2014 upon a complaint by

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against Washington D.C. whistleblower lawyer Lynne Bernabei and

Notre Dame Law School Notre Dame Law School is the professional graduate law school of the University of Notre Dame. Established in 1869, it is the oldest continuously operating Catholic law school in the United States. ND Law is ranked 22nd among the nation's "Top 1 ...

professor

G. Robert Blakey George Robert Blakey (born January 7, 1936) is an United States, American Attorneys in the United States, attorney and law professor. He is best known for his work in connection with drafting the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Ac ...

for advising in-house counsel Adriana Koeck to make her disclosures publicly to a

reporter, as well as to the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...

and federal prosecutors. In December, the 80-year old and retired Blakey agreed to accept similar unappealable discipline with respect to his advice to former student Koeck. Tamm's attorney said the Maryland Bar had investigated Tamm for the same disclosures in 2009, and decided not to press charges. On March 24, 2016, the National Law Journal reported that Tamm had agreed to accept censure by the D.C. Court of Appeals to resolve that disciplinary proceeding and allow him to continue his life and career, rather than face the prospect of many years of litigation before many courts.

Awards

* 2009 Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize

References

External links

* Isikoff, Michael,
The Fed Who Blew the Whistle
" ''