In a national broadcast exclusive, Democracy Now! interviews Thomas Tamm, the former U.S. Justice Department attorney who helped expose the Bush administration's domestic warrantless eavesdropping program that intercepted private email messages and phone calls of U.S. residents without a court warrant.
On Tuesday, news broke that the Justice Department dropped its long-running criminal investigation of Tamm. The relatively quiet end to the investigation into Tamm's warrantless wiretapping leak marks a sharp contrast to the controversy his information generated during the second half of the Bush administration about whether the government had overstepped its legal authority in response to the 9/11 terror attacks.
"I think the reason [the probe was dropped] is because the lawyers at the Department of Justice realize that what was being done was in fact illegal. I mean, it's very difficult to prosecute someone such as myself, recognizing that what I did was reveal something that was against the law," Tamm said on Democracy Now! April 28.
"And I also believe that it would have been a problem proving the case against me, because President Bush, the day after that article was published, basically acknowledged that the program existed. In fact, he almost seemed like he was proud of the fact that there was warrantless wiretapping, you know, to supposedly protect the country. In my opinion, he revealed more classified information than I ever did. And the bottom line is, as we mentioned earlier, I didn't turn over any documents, I didn't reveal any sources. And really, the bottom line is, I don't think I ever broke the law," Tamm said.
Here is an expert of Tamm's interview with Democracy Now! hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Click here to read the entire transcript:
To watch the entire interview uninterrupted and to see additional coverage of Bush's domestic warrantless spy program, check out the Democracy Now! news archive. Join us on Facebook and share with a friend!
