In an article currently linked on Drudge, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reports that a former NSA employee, Russ Tice, sent letters to the heads of the congressional intelligence committees a few days after the New York Times reported its story about NSA wiretapping. In the letters, Tice said that he wanted to testify about illegal NSA activities.

The information in Gertz’s article can also be found in this press release issued by the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition on Dec. 22, 2005 — so it’s not exactly breaking news. But Gertz’s article strangely leaves out some key details about Tice. Gertz certainly knew about Tice’s complicated history, to say the least, with his former employers at DIA and NSA: He’s reported on it before:

Mr. Tice’s case began in early 2001 while he was working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. At that time, he said, he began to suspect that an Asian-American woman working with him at DIA was linked to Chinese intelligence.
The woman voiced sympathies toward China and against Taiwan, and showed what officials say are often signs of espionage, including personal travel abroad and unusual affluence.
Mr. Tice said he alerted DIA’s security office to the woman’s activities and initially was told his suspicions were unfounded. He transferred to a job at NSA in November 2002 and continued to report his security concerns about the DIA analyst.
His concerns were heightened by the case of the FBI’s longtime paid informant, Katrina Leung, who was arrested in April 2003 for supplying FBI counterintelligence secrets to Chinese intelligence and for having affairs with two veteran FBI counterspies.
Mr. Tice said that after Miss Leung’s arrest in April 2003, he sent an e-mail message from his NSA office to a DIA security official questioning the FBI’s competence in probing Chinese espionage.
Mr. Tice said during one exchange with the DIA counterintelligence official he was told there is “reason to be concerned” about the female DIA analyst being a spy.
The DIA official forwarded Mr. Tice’s e-mail to NSA security, which then ordered him to take the psychiatric evaluation that led to the suspension of his security clearances.

The evaluation found Tice to be mentally unbalanced, leading to his demotion to the motor pool and his eventual dismissal.

Liberal blogger Kevin Drum doesn’t seem to be putting much stock in this guy. Tom Maguire also has a lot of good links in this post. 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?