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News Opinion National Issues Best Countries Cartoons Photos the Report Pre-Snowden Whistleblower Thomas Tamm Faces Misconduct Charges, ... http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/pre-snowden-whistle... News Opinion National Issues Best Countries Cartoons Photos The Report Ken Walsh's Washington Decision 2016 The Run 2016 The Chase Washington Whispers At the Edg Thomas Tamm exposed the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Fellow Justice Department whistleblower Jesselyn Radack, right, waited a decade for a misconduct complaint against her to be dismissed. By Steven Nelson Jan. 27, 2016, at 2:42 p.m. + More A whistleblower who sparked intense public debate about warrantless surveillance nearly a decade 1 of 6 4/11/2016 10:03 AM Pre-Snowden Whistleblower Thomas Tamm Faces Misconduct Charges, ... http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/pre-snowden-whistle... before Edward Snowden now faces ethics charges that could result in his disbarment. Thomas Tamm, a former Justice Department attorney, told reporters in 2004 about the Bush administration bypassing standard legal procedure for intercepting Americans’ international phone calls and emails, and publicly outed himself weeks before President Barack Obama took office. Tamm’s tip helped New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau win a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. And under Obama, who had criticized the program, the Justice Department in 2011 announced it would not bring criminal charges against him. But on Tuesday, the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel – which prosecutes disciplinary matters involving members of the D.C. Bar – unveiled ethics charges against Tamm that could result in his disbarment. The charges allege Tamm “failed to refer information in his possession that persons within the Department of Justice were violating their legal obligations to higher authority within the Department” and “revealed to a newspaper reporter confidences or secrets of his client, the Department of Justice.” [RELATED: NSA Water, Electricity Supply Safe as 'Off Now' Push Fizzles] The D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel began its investigation in 2009, but the charges weren’t filed until late December and were first reported by the National Law Journal on Tuesday. Gene Shipp, who leads the attorney-prosecuting office as disciplinary counsel, declined to comment specifically on the Tamm case, but attributed the delay in filing charges to a redoubled attempt to clear a case backlog resulting from about 1,000 complaints a year, less than half of which are investigated. “Sometimes we stand down when other agencies are doing things, we don’t try to get in front of the federal government,” Shipp says. The matter now goes to a three-member hearing committee for appraisal and then a nine-member Board on Professional Responsibility, before possible evaluation by the District of Columbia’s court system. Some cases take a few years, others longer. “We’re very young in the process of this case," Shipp says. “God bless anybody who has to go through this system – it’s difficult. People spend a long time becoming a lawyer and then to face charges, it’s hard. But we have to protect the public, however long it takes.” [READ: Internet Provider Gagged for Decade Reveals What FBI Wanted Without Warrant] Georgetown University law professor Michael Frisch is representing Tamm, and he knows how long the process can take. Frisch previously represented hard-charging whistleblower attorney Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department ethics adviser who waited a decade to learn if the office would bring 2 of 6 4/11/2016 10:03 AM Pre-Snowden Whistleblower Thomas Tamm Faces Misconduct Charges, ... http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/pre-snowden-whistle... charges for her exposing details about the interrogation of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. “It’s unfortunate and it’s not unusual – the kind of delays the record reflect here are becoming fairly common in the D.C. Bar disciplinary system,” Frisch says. “You see a lot of cases where the investigative period takes years and then the process itself takes years once the charges are filed.” Frisch says it’s possible the Board on Professional Responsibility will short-circuit the case by recommending no action against Tamm before it reaches court. The Office of Disciplinary Counsel would have to choose not to appeal for that to happen – but Shipp says changing his mind isn’t impossible. “A lot of the damage of these cases is the strain and pressure of having to endure the process and the charges,” Frisch says. It’s unclear if possible disciplinary action within the District of Columbia would affect Tamm’s ability to practice law in Maryland, where he currently works as a public defender. [ALSO: New Tactic to Stop Whistleblowers: Scare Their Parents?] Frisch says he has “no comment” on whether political motives may be in play, but Radack says she believes political persecution is at hand. “I’ve known Tom Tamm for many years and he is one of the most ethical attorneys I know,” she says. “I believe the bar charges against him are politicized retaliation. The fact that they are bringing them more than 10 years after his revelations diminish any [inkling] of legitimacy because of stale evidence and eroded memories due to the passage of time.” “Like in my case, I suspect that some of the witnesses against Tamm have passed away,” she says. “This has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with politics, retaliation and punishment – as do so many of the government’s actions designed to ruin whistleblowers’ careers.” In her own case, Radack says, the possibility of bar charges “were a Sword of Damocles over my head.” “It made it very difficult to secure a job,” she says. “Just being referred to the bar – even absent a finding of misconduct – will automatically increase the malpractice liability insurance of anyone who hires you. Moreover, who wants to gamble on someone at risk of losing their license?” Shipp denies his office pursues cases based on the political leanings of its staff. He recalls Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an aide to RELATED CONTENT former Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sandy Berger, a former Arizona May Criminalize national security adviser for President Bill Clinton, both being Recording Cops in Public disbarred at about the same time, and says the staff was “pretty 3 of 6 4/11/2016 10:03 AM Pre-Snowden Whistleblower Thomas Tamm Faces Misconduct Charges, ... http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/pre-snowden-whistle... ecumenical” about it. TAGS: NSA + More Steven Nelson is a reporter at U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at [email protected]. Sponsored Links by Taboola How to Use Mobile Analytics to Build a Better… Hewlett Packard Enterprise A new MMORPG where you can meet a dragon. … Stormfall - Online Game Surprising Changes Coming To Social Securi… 4 of 6 4/11/2016 10:03 AM Whistleblower Lawyers Counterattack Against DC Disciplinary Counsel http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/whistleblower-lawyer... RSS By Editor Filed in News February 15th, 2016 @ 8:59 pm The DC Disciplinary Counsel — previously known as the DC Bar Counsel — is on the attack against whistleblower lawyers. And whistleblower lawyers are not happy about it. They have launched something of a counterattack. Tom Devine The Disciplinary Counsel has filed charges against prominent Washington whistleblower lawyer Lynne Bernabei and former Justice Department attorney Thomas Tamm. The Disciplinary Counsel brought charges in June 2014 against Bernabei and Notre Dame Law Professor G. Robert Blakey — alleging that the two advised their client — former General Electric lawyer and whistleblower Adriana Koeck — to go public to reporters and law enforcement officials in the United States with incriminating and alleged confidential information against General Electric. The case was initiated with a complaint filed by General Electric with the Disciplinary Counsel against Koeck. In November 2015, Blakey was given the mildest possible sanction in the District — an admonition. The cases against Koeck and Bernabei are pending. Last month, Tamm was charged with calling a reporter from a pay phone to make public the federal government’s program of illegal wiretapping. 1 of 6 4/3/2016 4:30 PM Whistleblower Lawyers Counterattack Against DC Disciplinary Counsel http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/whistleblower-lawyer... Now, the whistleblower bar is organizing to push back at what they see as an ideological attack on whistleblower lawyers. “We have rolled up our sleeves and we are organizing,” Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “We are not going to be passive.” “These whistleblowers were acting within the legal rights Congress created with the whistleblower statutes,” Devine said. “In the Tamm case, the government didn’t even attempt to charge him with misconduct. His activities were legally protected. In the Bernabei case, the Department of Labor rejected the same charges when General Electric tried to censor Ms. Bernabei’s advocacy for the whistleblower in government proceedings. This is an attack by the DC Bar Counsel on the constitutional authority of Congress and the President to enact the rules of law and for judicial bodies to enforce them. The Bar Counsel is saying that its standards trump and can cancel out the free speech rules that our government has enacted to protect the public against bureaucratic misconduct.” Former Justice Department official and whistleblower lawyer Jesselyn Radack told Corporate Crime Reporter that the Disciplinary Counsel “has a nasty history of politically-motivated bar discipline, especially against whistleblowers and attorneys for whistleblowers.” “Like Thomas Tamm, I blew the whistle as a Justice Department attorney,” Radack said. “As with Tamm, the federal criminal case against me closed with no charges ever being brought.
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