NSA Whistleblower Meets Anthrax ‘Person of Interest’

[kpete]

Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online
NSA Whistleblower Meets Anthrax ‘Person of Interest’


WASHINGTON — They sat near different ends of a long table Thursday: a former Justice Department official who leaked information on Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program to the New York Times, and a former Army scientist who was wrongly linked to the 2001 anthrax attacks by different, but equally-anonymous, government sources.

You couldn’t ask for a starker example of everything good and bad about journalists’ use of anonymous sources in Washington, and both men have had their lives changed by their experiences.

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When the Times finally ran the story, setting off a firestorm in Congress and the national press, and spawning dozens of lawsuits against telecoms and the government, the FBI began trying to track down the leak. In 2007, Tamm came home to find 18 agents in his house. “They were all wearing body armor, they were all well armed,” he recalled. “They asked my kids if we had any secret rooms in the house … or whether I had any weapons. They were in my house for over seven hours.”

“I’m sure before that time my phone was listened to,” he added. His wife, who didn’t know he’d turned whistleblower, has been forever changed. “She will never feel the same in my house … She really felt that her security had been victimized.”

more at:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/5954/