"I thought the whistleblower to the NYT was a former NSA employee? So he didn't complain about the program to his employees but just ran right to the newspaper?"
Tice had been bounced out before any of this hit the news.
He complained (probably to the IG) about the co-worker he thought was a Chi-Com agent.
But he only talked to the press about his outrage at the AQ monitoring.
Odds are, he didn't even know it was going on until he read about it in the NYT.
Thanks.