A week ago, the Justice Department's Criminal Division sent a letter, http://images.salon.com/..., to Thomas Tamm, the Justice Department lawyer who blew the whistle on Bush's illegal NSA secret domestic surveillance program to the New York Times--a story that won a Pulitizer prize. The Justice Department, instead of going after the top officials who authorized this secret and then-illegal spying program, went after the "leaker" who revealed it.
My heart bleeds with sympathy. When I (also a Justice Department attorney at the time) revealed prosecutorial misconduct in the case of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, the Department conducted a pretextual criminal investigation of me.
Like Tamm, I made anonymous disclosures to the media of high-level Justice Department wrongdoing. Like Tamm, my allegations proved to be true. Like Tamm, my life was upended and virtually destroyed by the Department's ensuing criminal investigation (among an array of retaliatory acts like referring me to the state licensing bars and putting me on the "No-Fly List") into my disclosure. Tamm, out of desperation to end the campaign of personal destruction, recently revealed himself as one of the New York Times' sources.
This is your taxpayer money at work: going after people like me, Tamm, and others who have exposed high-level lawbreaking by our nation's top officials at the Justice Department and White House.
Please let President-elect Barack Obama know that these witch-hunts must be stopped the minute he takes office. (It would be futile to suggest that Congress do something because Democratic Congressional leaders were complicit insofar as they were told repeatedly that Bush was eavesdropping on Americans and did nothing to stop it.)
The Government Accountability Office, under an Obama administration, should do an audit of how many taxpayer dollars have been spent "investigating" me, Tom Tamm, Sibel Edmonds and so many others who were simply trying to do their jobs, encountered gross wrongdoing, tried to correct it, and then were cruxcified with Javert investigations, criminal probes, professional assassination, character smears, astronomical legal bills, and the attendant health problems and family troubles that few could avoid under such circumstances.
Persecuting whistleblowers for this Administration's rampant lawbreaking must stop. Investigate the real criminals. For once.