Rus­sell Tice has some­thing to say, but there is no one he can talk to.

He explained as much at a mid-Feb­ru­ary hear­ing before the House Gov­ern­ment Reform Sub­com­mit­tee on Nation­al Secu­ri­ty, Emerg­ing Threats and Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions. Tice is a 20-year vet­er­an of the Unit­ed States intel­li­gence net­work, hav­ing worked for Naval Intel­li­gence, the Depart­ment of Defense and, most recent­ly, the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency, where he held the posi­tion of intel­li­gence ana­lyst and capa­bil­i­ties offi­cer. He has inti­mate knowl­edge of the inner­most work­ings of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, and wants to tell Con­gress about an NSA pro­gram that, he says, is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and pos­si­bly criminal.

“What [the Amer­i­can peo­ple] know about is Hiroshi­ma,” he says. ​“What I’m going to tell you about is Nagasa­ki. I’m going to tell you about three Nagasakis.” He is gagged, how­ev­er, by the non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment he signed before becom­ing privy to top-secret gov­ern­ment activities.

“Any­one who comes for­ward is real­ly made into a mar­tyr,” says Beth Daley, Senior Inves­ti­ga­tor at the Project on Gov­ern­ment Over­sight, who works with whistle­blow­ers. ​“It dis­cour­ages oth­er peo­ple from com­ing forward.”

Tice’s sto­ry is com­plex. In 2001, he sus­pect­ed a co-work­er at the Defense Intel­li­gence Agency of being a dou­ble agent. He dis­creet­ly noti­fied a DIA counter-intel­li­gence offi­cer, who told him that the FBI had inves­ti­gat­ed and there was noth­ing to his con­cerns. He still had his doubts, but when he brought up the mat­ter again in 2003, the NSA’s secu­ri­ty office called him in for an emer­gency psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion. Despite hav­ing cleared him for duty after a rou­tine exam­i­na­tion nine months ear­li­er, they declared him to be suf­fer­ing from para­noia, and down­grad­ed his clear­ance to ​“red badge” sta­tus. (An inde­pen­dent psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion has refut­ed this diag­no­sis.) He was reas­signed to do odd jobs at the NSA motor pool, where he began to talk to oth­er demot­ed red badge employ­ees, and his super­vi­sor accused him of try­ing to form a union.

Tice asked the Inspec­tors Gen­er­al at both the NSA and the Depart­ment of Defense to inves­ti­gate the mat­ter, and nei­ther claimed to find any impro­pri­ety. In Feb­ru­ary 2004, he told the NSA’s secu­ri­ty office that if he didn’t receive a new inves­ti­ga­tion or get his secu­ri­ty clear­ance back, he was going to talk to the press. Short­ly after that, he lost his job.

The NSA denies that it prac­tices retal­i­a­tion against whistle­blow­ers. Yet, Tice is still being mon­i­tored by the agency. In a Jan­u­ary 9 let­ter to Tice, Renee Sey­mour, Direc­tor of NSA Spe­cial Access Pro­grams Cen­tral Office, remind­ed him that he was required to report prob­lems to ​“appro­pri­ate­ly cleared indi­vid­u­als” at the NSA or Depart­ment of Defense before talk­ing to any con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees – and rein­forced that no one in either the House or the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tees was cleared to receive the infor­ma­tion he wished to divulge.

James Bam­ford, author of Body of Secrets and The Puz­zle Palace, is an expert on the inner work­ings of America’s intel­li­gence agen­cies. ​“The con­gres­sion­al intel­li­gence com­mit­tees have lost total con­trol over the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties,” says Bam­ford. ​“You can’t get any over­sight or checks and bal­ances; the Con­gress is pro­tect­ing the White House and the White House can do what­ev­er it wants.”

Bam­ford notes that the last time con­gres­sion­al hear­ings on poten­tial abus­es of pow­er were com­mon­ly held was when the Democ­rats con­trolled the exec­u­tive branch and Repub­li­cans con­trolled the leg­is­la­ture. Because the same par­ty con­trols both branch­es, he says, there is lit­tle incen­tive to investigate.

This is not entire­ly for lack of try­ing. At the subcommittee’s hear­ing on nation­al secu­ri­ty whistle­blow­ers, rank­ing Demo­c­rat Den­nis Kucinich (D‑Ohio) asked Chair­man Christo­pher Shays (R‑Conn.) to join him in writ­ing a let­ter to both the Intel­li­gence and Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tees regard­ing Tice’s case. Shays agreed, and Kucinich spokesman Doug Gor­don says they are cur­rent­ly dis­cussing the matter.

“This shouldn’t be a par­ti­san issue, but that’s not the atti­tude in this town,” Tice says. ​“I fear for us.”