[ More impeachable offenses... ]
John Calvert
Spying Scandal Draws Heat
Lawmakers call on Bush to explain his post-9/11 order allowing a secret agency to monitor U.S. citizens without first getting a warrant.
By Maura Reynolds and Greg Miller Times Staff Writers
December 17, 2005
WASHINGTON — Members of Congress demanded Friday that President Bush and his administration explain his decision to permit the country's most secretive intelligence agency to spy on American citizens in the United States after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks without first obtaining warrants.
Democrats and some Republicans denounced the administration's action, describing it as an example of Bush's use of the threat of terrorism to assume new legal and intelligence powers and to limit civil liberties.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he would call congressional hearings as soon as possible. Warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens is "wrong, and it can't be condoned at all," he said.
According to former officials familiar with the policy, Bush signed an executive order in 2002 granting new surveillance powers to the National Security Agency — the branch of the U.S. intelligence services responsible for international eavesdropping, and whose existence was long denied by the government.
"I want to know precisely what they did: how NSA utilized their technical equipment, whose conversations they overheard, how many conversations they overheard, what they did with the material, what purported justification there was … and we will go from there," Specter said.
After the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the administration sought to ease the restrictions on wiretaps and e-mail surveillance to investigate U.S. citizens suspected of having ties to terrorists. Ordinarily, the government must gain permission from special courts to turn its surveillance on U.S. citizens, either domestically or overseas.
The surveillance operation was first reported by the New York Times.
"If this article is accurate, it calls into question the integrity and credibility of our nation's commitment to the rule of law," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the intelligence and judiciary committees.
The president and his aides moved quickly Friday to try to contain the controversy.
Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol Hill to confer with the leaders of both chambers as well as the chairman and top Democrat on each of the intelligence panels. Those present refused to discuss the session.
In a TV interview, Bush said he could not talk about the matter. "We do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country, and the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them," he said on PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."
Bush said he understood that Americans were eager to learn the details of the post-Sept. 11 surveillance operations. But he's "just not going to do it," he said. U.S. intelligence officials also refused to confirm the account.
The existence of the highly classified NSA program was confirmed by two former senior U.S. intelligence officials with firsthand knowledge of the effort. The former officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
The program was launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and was designed to enable the NSA to monitor communications between Americans in the U.S. and people overseas suspected of having ties to terrorist networks. One aim was to take swift advantage of fresh leads collected overseas by the CIA, especially in cases in which an agency raid led to the seizure of a laptop or cellphone containing logs of phone numbers.
One of the former intelligence officials said it was designed to enable them "to follow up on anything and exhaust all possible leads" at a time when "the threat level couldn't be any higher." Much of the NSA's activity was driven by CIA operations.
"We would say, any call from this number — whether it goes to Brooklyn or Tashkent — listen in on it," the former official said. "The freedom was needed to follow the traffic, the phone traffic, wherever it went." The former official, who defended the program, added: "You have to remember that up until the Patriot Act, [NSA eavesdropping experts] had to hang up even if they had Osama bin Laden talking to an American."
The second former official said the program contributed to the apprehension of Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who pleaded guilty in 2003 to collaborating with Al Qaeda in a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge.
The NSA effort was suspended at one point because of objections from a judge, but was subsequently resumed and was still active as recently as several months ago, one of the former officials said.
One of the main concerns after Sept. 11, the former officials said, was that obtaining warrants took so long that there was little time to react to fresh intelligence. But, they said, there was concern from the very beginning in some quarters that the program might be overstepping 1970s-era laws protecting the civil liberties of Americans.
"You can imagine a program like this was kept in the tightest of compartments," the second former official said. But even within those compartments, he said, there was "uneasiness among some folks, wondering whether this does have appropriate authorization."
Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who was chairman of the Intelligence Committee at the time the eavesdropping program was launched, said in an interview Friday that he was never told about the program during his time on the committee.
"I didn't learn about it until well after I was off the Intelligence Committee," said Graham, whose tenure as chairman began several months before the Sept. 11 attacks and ended in January 2003.
Graham's statement raises questions about whether the Bush administration provided timely notice to congressional oversight committees, as is required by law. He recalled attending a meeting in early 2002 in Cheney's office about the NSA, but it focused on other operations, such as monitoring overseas e-mail traffic that flowed through Internet service providers based in the U.S.
Federal law requires the president to keep Congress "fully and currently informed" of all significant intelligence activities. Legal experts and congressional officials said a program monitoring the electronic communications of Americans would be considered the type of program that would require immediate congressional notification.
But some pointed to a loophole in the law that allows a president to withhold information under extreme circumstances.
In comments to reporters, Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales insisted that the administration had followed the law, including briefing lawmakers as proxies for the public. "I certainly respect and understand the need for the American people to understand what their government is doing," he said. "And, obviously, we respect that and we try to make information available to the American people, but we also have a corresponding duty to ensure that national security is protected."
Feinstein said that informing a handful of members of Congress who are restricted from reporting or responding to the information in any way did not make the policy legal or constitute congressional oversight.
"What is concerning me, as a member of the Intelligence Committee, is if eight people, rather than 535 people, can know there is going to be an illegal act and they were told this under an intelligence umbrella — and therefore, their lips are sealed — does that make the act any less culpable? I don't think so," Feinstein said.
Times staff writers Warren Vieth, Josh Meyer and Bob Drogin contributed to this report.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-spy17dec17,0,1542115.story?coll=la-home-nation
Bush defends warrant-less wiretaps Legality of program questioned; Senate probe on way
By William Spain,
MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:43 PM ET Dec. 17, 2005
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) - President Bush defended his use of warrant-less wiretaps Saturday, saying the eavesdropping is necessary to protect the nation from terrorists, vowing to continue even as the legality of the program is called into question.
"I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations," he said in his weekly radio address, broadcast live form Washington. "This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies." See Whitehouse Webcast of speech.
News of the program broke in the New York Times on Friday, setting off a legal and political furor. The newspaper revealed that the National Security Agency has been monitoring international communications of hundreds of people in the U.S. and that NSA officials have questioned the legality of the program.
Bush attacked both the story and those who provide information for it.
"Our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk," he said. "Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country."
But, by ordering the wiretaps directly, Bush may have violated laws requiring the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to sign off on intelligence surveillance on American soil.
People within the borders of the U.S. are typically protected from this kind of government activity by the Fourth Amendment, which reads in part: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation ..."
The nation's largest civil liberties group flatly labeled the program illegal.
"Eavesdropping on conversations of U.S citizens and others in the United States without a court order and without complying with the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is both illegal and unconstitutional," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislative Office, in a written release. "The administration is claiming extraordinary presidential powers at the expense of civil liberties and is putting the president above the law," she said.
Fredrickson called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the program and said that "Congress must investigate this report thoroughly."
One top Senator and member of Bush's own party vowed to do just that.
The wiretaps are "wrong, clearly and categorically wrong,'' said Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, quoted in various wire reports.
Specter, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, promised that a Senate probe of Bush's actions will begin "as soon as we can get to it in the new year -- a very, very high priority item.''
The revelations came on the same day when most Senate Democrats, joined by a handful of Republicans, beat back an attempt to renew the controversial USA Patriot Act, a measure passed in wake o the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks that vastly expanded the powers of law enforcement. Some provisions of the act are set to expire at midnight on New Year's Eve.
In his speech, Bush also took a shot at them: "A minority of senators filibustered to block the renewal of the Patriot Act when it came up for a vote yesterday," he said. "That decision is irresponsible, and it endangers the lives of our citizens....In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment."
Senators from both sides of the aisle had proposed various changes to the law, including new expiration dates -- moves opposed by the White House and most Republicans in Congress.
One exception is Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire.
"No substantive material has been provided to argue how our specific changes would weaken or undermine law enforcement's ability to do its job in pursuing terrorists," he said on his official website. "A standard should be to put in place to protect civil liberties no matter who holds the power in the executive, the legislative or the judicial branches."
Sununu also quoted Benjamin Franklin's famous words: "Those who would give up essential liberty in the pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security."
William Spain is a MarketWatch staff writer in Chicago.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BD0D65D17-3B07-4533-8CDB-61C9CB79FECE%7D&siteid=google
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=Downing+Street+Memo
