WASHINGTON – FBI agents searched the home of former Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm last week in an effort to determine who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday, citing two anonymous legal sources.
The agents, who had obtained a classified search warrant, took Tamm's desktop computer, two laptops belonging to his children and some of Tamm's personal files, said Newsweek, which granted anonymity to the two sources because they did not want to be identified talking about an open case.
Tamm left the department last year. He had worked in the department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, a secretive unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets, according to Newsweek.
In December 2005, The New York Times published a story exposing the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants.
The eavesdropping was conducted without public knowledge and without any court approval until last January, when the program was put under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the leak "really hurt our country."
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