Aug. 6, 2007 (LPAC)--FBI agents searched the home of former Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm last week, as part of an investigation of the leak of the existence of the Administration's warrantless wiretap program to the New York Times, according to the Aug. 13 issue of Newsweek. After sitting on the information for a year at the request of the Administration, the Times finally published the story in December 2005--the first that most members of Congress even knew about the domestic spying program, although a handful of Congressional leaders had been partially briefed by Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials.

FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, took Tamm's desktop computer, two laptops belonging to his children and some of his personal files. Tamm had worked in the DOJ's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets, and he was there during the violent controversy over the NSA spying program in March 2004, during which many top DOJ officials threatened to resign because they had concluded that the program was unlawful. Tamm left the Justice Department a year ago.