Posted on 12/21/2008 2:37:42 PM PST by neverdem
I’ve got a big problem with newspapers who put American lives at risk by publishing our nation’s secrets. But that’s nothing compared to what I think should be done to the people -- trusted people within our government -- who leak our secrets.
If I can borrow a little from by blood brother Willie Nelson, we should send ‘em all to their Maker and he’ll settle ‘em down.
Government employees entrusted with our national secrets are morally, ethically, logically and legally required to keep them secret. Those employees who intentionally leak national secrets should -- no, must -- be charged with a crime and prosecuted with the seriousness of the offense. It is a federal felony to knowingly compromise national secrets.
Those who leak or sell government secrets are traitors, pure and simple. What I’ve never been able to understand is why the Justice Department can’t get the best FBI people to find these guys and prosecute them. None of the leakers -- that’s right, not one of ‘em -- has been prosecuted in the last eight years despite some of the hugest leaks ever.
Now we know the name of one of the leakers.
Thomas "the Traitor" Tamm, a former Department of Justice lawyer, tipped off the New York Times about a secret government operation conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor and track potential terrorist maggots through their e-mail, phone calls and financial transactions. Traitor Tamm did this because, in his own words, "something didn't smell right" about it.
I am a huge fan of whistleblowers wherever they may blow, but in the war on terror, national security is Job One for anyone with a soul.
What does smell right is that Traitor Tamm is a federal felon who deserves to be charged by the Department of Justice for compromising national secrets, and he’s still walking the streets.
Instead of vigorously reporting through his chain of command and appropriate federal government whistleblower chain of what he thought was potentially an illegal operation, Traitor Tamm instead disclosed the sensitive terrorist program to the New York Times, an entity whose allegiance is already suspect.
In some recent interviews with Newsweek, Traitor Tamm stated "I thought this was something the other branches of the government and the public ought to know about so they could decide: Do they want this massive spying program to be taking place?"
Traitor Tamm had worked in a secret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage punks. Working with this secret unit is where Traitor Tamm discovered the highly sensitive NSA operation of tracking terrorists and potential terrorists in America through eavesdropping on international phone calls and e-mails.
It was not that Traitor Tamm was just concerned that the secret operation may be illegal that he illegally leaked the operation to the New York Times. I also read that Traitor Tamm was angry at the Bush Justice Department for aggressively pursuing death penalty cases and for interrogation techniques that some believe constitute torture. Ideological differences aside, it is never justification to leak classified information about government operations.
Traitor Tamm is really no different than any other spy such as Aldrich Ames who compromised national secrets for cash and got a number of our spies killed. Traitor Tamm leaked classified information because he did not like the odor of the program. Regardless of rational, Traitor Tamm is as guilty as Aldrich Ames.
The United States can not possibly hope to defeat those monsters who want to kill us if we have government employees with access to classified information who run to the press every time they come across classified information or programs that they may not agree with. Their moral, ethical and possibly legal objections to classified programs is never reason to leak it to the press. For that very reason, people who compromise classified information -- for whatever reason -- should be vigorously prosecuted. Failing to prosecute them will send the wrong message to others with access to our most sensitive information.
I encourage whistle blowers at all levels. God only knows we need more of them to expose the wasteful, toxic underbelly of Fedzilla. However, leaking classified information is something altogether different. Compromising classified information can get Americans killed and aid and abet our enemies. That is the worst sort of crime, and those who commit it should be sent away for life.
We can debate whether or not the NSA's program was legal or not. What is not debatable is that Traitor Tamm leaked classified information and that is a felony.
Let us all hope and pray that Traitor Tamm's compromising of the NSA's secret program does not put America more at risk of a terrorist attack. And let’s hope that someone in the Justice Department gets off his behind and puts this guy in jail where he belongs.
How about getting the NY Treason Times for its collusion?
Bump!
Uncle Ted Bump!
ping
Ted,
Well done. The NY Times is nothing but a sludge wrapper that is completely worthless and useless except as a trumpet for our enemies. Tamm is a traitor as you say and will some day burn in hell with others of his ilk.
His home address has "disappeared" if it ever was on the net, and no one knows who his friends and neighbors were or are.
You can just imagine the number of Americans who want to hunt this puke down and bring his hide home as a trophy. Now, if the Newsweek reporter can be found and made to talk.
We should have the death penalty for traitors like Tamm and the NY Times scum who enabled and publicized his contemptible work.
If he had “concerns” there are whistle-blower procedures within the federal govt. But of course that would not have been as useful to HIM as becoming a cause celebre for the leftist mediascum.
The Newsweak article said that Tamm first tried to make it a public issue during the 2004 Presidential campaign, so I assume he hoped to be like Joe & Valerie Wilson, trying to bring down the eviiillll BushCo. admin. He was soooo disappointed that the NY Slimes held off for so long, maybe b/c they did not think the American public was yet sufficiently prepared for such outright treason.
The Bush Justice Department is a dismal failure when it comes to prosecuting national security leakers.
Border Patrol agents? Well...
New York Times The Caucus political blog. The post was a sarcastic comment at 11:42 AM in the November 29, 2006 edition of The Caucus over the possibility of civil war in Iraq:
It is not yet a civil war. It won’t be a civil war until there are two armies, one from the north, one from the south. The two armies must wear blue and gray respectively, and must be led by U.S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Only then will it meet our definition of a civil war.
-—Posted by Thomas Tamm
Even more revealing is this BDS post to Eric Alterman by Thomas Tamm in the far left Media Matters:
Correspondence Corner:
Name: Thomas M. Tamm
Hometown: Potomac, Maryland USA
Dear Eric: Is not the administration’s position that they would not permit the U.S. Attorney to prosecute a Congressional Contempt referral an implicit admission that they allow politics to impact prosecutions? They are admitting that they would interfere with the independent judgment of a prosecutor on a specific case. I suggest that this is precisely what the firings of the U.S. Attorneys are ultimately about. Yes, they serve at the pleasure of the president, but they do not prosecute at the pleasure of the president. The White House is guilty of taking the blindfold off lady justice, not just covering her breasts. I am a former DOJ lawyer, for what that is worth.
These days Tamm is self-employed as a sometimes-public defender, and is struggling with $30,000 in debt. He suffers from depression and waits in anguish to find out what will happen to him. A Justice Department prosecutor has told his lawyer that the department will wait to decide whether to prosecute him until the Obama administration takes office.
FISA Leaker Featured on Newsweek Cover ID’d as BDS Loon by NewsBusters in 2007
By P.J. Gladnick
December 16, 2008 - 08:33 ET
The high level Justice Department official who leaked FISA information to the New York Times, Thomas Tamm, is currently featured on the cover of Newsweek along with the story about his motivations for leaking the details of the top secret program to monitor communications between terrorist suspects. Newsweek attempts to portray Tamm as some sort of noble hero who was torn by his decision to violate the secrecy of the FISA program:
A high level official who decides for himself that a top secret program is illegal wrestles with his conscience over what to do...until he leaks it to the New York Times. Hogwash. The motivation, in Tamm’s own words, is much simpler. He is a BDS loon as chronicled by your humble correspondent here in NewsBusters way back in August 2007:
Anybody who reads Web forums dedicated to current events is familiar with the phenomenom of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) in which leftwingers rant wildly about the supposed crimes of the EVIL Bush regime. Most of the time those postings can be written off as just another case of the left having mental problems handling the fact that they do not control the executive branch of government. However, we might now have a case in which BDS has the positive effect of actually causing a high level government leaker of super secret information to expose himself. The story about the alleged leaker to the press of the FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) program details was written up in the August 13 Newsweek article, Looking For a Leaker:
What this Newsweek story by Michael Isikoff doesn’t mention is what might have caused the FBI to be suspicious of the alleged leaker-—BDS blog postings by Thomas Tamm. One such BDS posting was made by a reader identifying himself as Thomas Tamm in the New York Times The Caucus political blog. The post was a sarcastic comment at 11:42 AM in the November 29, 2006 edition of The Caucus over the possibility of civil war in Iraq:
UPDATE: Our own Par for the Course has found some great information on Thomas Tamm that was conveniently overlooked by Newsweek from FEC Individual Contributor Search.
TAMM, THOMAS MARK
POTOMAC, MD 20854
US ATTORNEYS OFFICE/ATTORNEY
DNC Services Corporation/Democratic National Committee
09/17/2004 300.00
Gee! Do you suppose that politics just possibly could have been a major motivation to leak the FISA program details?
This man is a traitor and should be treated accordingly.
Newsweek’s hero, part 2
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/12/022323.php
Russell Tice outed himself as a source soon after the publication of the Times story. One wonders why the government has brought no prosecution to date in connection with the incredibly damaging crimes committed by Tamm, Tice and the others. One also wonders whether such treachery will continue to be the subject of adulation in the age of Obama.
For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people’s conversations around the world.
“I specialized in what’s called special access programs,” Tice said of his job. “We called them ‘black world’ programs and operations.”
But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret “black world” operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.
“The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to get them,” he said.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1491889
Tice Admits Being a Source for The New York Times
Tice maintains that his conscience is clear.
“As far as I’m concerned, as long as I don’t say anything that’s classified, I’m not worried,” he said. “We need to clean up the intelligence community. We’ve had abuses, and they need to be addressed.”
http://neveryetmelted.com/wp-images/RussellTice2.jpg
The NSA revoked Tice’s security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him.
Well, Bush passed up several opportunities to prosecute these guys, as well as the NY Times, for leaking vital secrets. If people are not punished for betraying our country, then that is just ASKING for more traitors to come out of the woodwork.
Now Bush is leaving it to Obama to prosecute? I’m sure Holy Hussein will do it . . . NOT. He is a traitor himself, to all appearances.
The perfect end to a disappointing administration.
The owners, writers, and editors of the NYT are not very intelligent. If they were, they would not leak information to undermine a President and our national security regardless of what Party they belong to.
Our enemies and even our economic competitors are NOT nice people you can just talk to and make it better. They are out to destroy us, and short of that, manipulate our country and politicians in any way possible to defeat us and put our domestic corporations out of business. They’re only nice when they get their way. It is incredibly naive to believe anything else.
In many other countries, newspaper personnel would be put on trial, convicted, and even executed for far less. You can hide behind freedom of the press all you want, but you have to use that right responsibly and not politically. It is no wonder newspapers are in such financial trouble. Half their potential readers are disgusted with their partisanship and sometimes outright treason.
Is He A Hero Or A Criminal?
The "heroic photo" certainly tells us how Newsweek would answer the question.
But, I wonder, how would Newsweek have staged the photo of Tamm if he had instead blown the whistle on the Clinton administration and Echelon.
In which case, the subhead would've been -- instead of "Is He A Hero Or A Criminal?" -- something like: "How Long Should He Be Imprisoned?" And, mind you, the context would be "peace time".
The media's double standard -- indeed, the liberal double standard -- is distorting public discourse beyond recognition.
Thanks for the links. The next time New York is hit I hope the NY Times is among the victims.
They aren’t going to hit the terrorists’ best friends(NYT) who provide more information than the terrorists can find out for themselves.
All the terrorists have to do is read the NYTs!
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