Russ Tice is a former NSA employee who was dismissed when a psychiatric evaluation found him to be mentally unbalanced. When his name first surfaced in connection with the NSA eavesdropping story in the New York Times, I wrote:

If Tice turns out to be one of the NY Times’ anonymous sources for its NSA stories, didn’t the Times readers deserve to know that its information came from a potentially unbalanced ex-employee with an ax to grind?

Well guess what? Russ Tice has confirmed to ABC News he was a source for the Times:

The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times’ reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear.
“As far as I’m concerned, as long as I don’t say anything that’s classified, I’m not worried,” he said. “We need to clean up the intelligence community. We’ve had abuses, and they need to be addressed.”
The NSA revoked Tice’s security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that’s the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had “no information to provide.”

The Justice Department has launched an investigation of the illegal disclosures of classified information that led to the Times story about NSA eavesdropping. If New York Times reporter James Risen is subpoenaed like Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper were during the investigation into who leaked the identity of Joseph Wilson’s wife, you’re going to hear the same arguments from the NYT’s lawyers that you heard then — reporters should have a right to protect their sources because their sources are brave, selfless whistleblowers who are doing a public service. As the Russ Tice case indicates, the truth is often more complicated.