Dissmissed NSA Employee Wants To Testify To Congress

A former NSA employee, dismissed from the agency last year, sent letters to the House and Senate intelligence committees stating that he is prepared to testify about “highly classified Special Access Programs, or SAPs, that were improperly carried out by both the NSA and the DIA.”

The former employee, Russ Tice sent his letters the same day the New York Times published the first report revealing the classified NSA terrorist communication intercept program. Tice says he was not part of the intercept program.

In his Dec. 16 letter, Mr. Tice wrote that his testimony would be given under the provisions of the 1998 Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, which makes it legal for intelligence officials to disclose wrongdoing without being punished.

Fired last year, not part of the intercept program, and coincidently sends letters to Congress asking to testify under the protection of the Whistleblower Protection Act the the same day the Times publishes the NSA story. That’s interesting.

Now perhaps Mr. Tice learned details about the program through the grapevine, tried to use the legal whistleblower procedure to voice his concerns, was fired from his job at the NSA for his efforts, and then without any recourse told his story to the New York Times. The idea for testifying to Congress as a “whistleblower” rather than leaking to the media didn’t dawn on him until later.

Or perhaps Tice was fired from his job, decided to leak to the New York Times reporters as an act of revenge and now after the fact wants to be treated as a “whistleblower” to escape criminal prosecution.

Or maybe Tice didn’t leak the classified information to the Times and it’s just an amazing coincidence his letters to members of Congress were sent the same day the NSA intercept program news was published.

Hopefully Russ Tice has already been contacted by the FBI and has given a full account of what he knows, what he did , when he did it and why.

Update: Scott at Poweline has more:

The NSA fired Tice earlier this year; he appears to have been at loggerheads with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the FBI as well as the NSA by the time he was terminated from the NSA. See Rebecca Carr's Cox News Service report "NSA fires whistleblower." There is no mention of concern over allegedly illegal NSA activity in connection with his termination, although he does note that a Defense Department psychologist concluded that he suffered from psychotic paranoia.

Update II: If you read the May 2005 article via the NSA fires whistleblower link you'll discover Tice was not fired for blowing the whistle on the NSA communication intercept program. Tice claims he was fired for blowing the whistle on a co-worker he suspected as being a spy for China.