Specter Seeks AG's Testimony on
Spying
CBS News
January 8, 2006
(AP) The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday he has asked
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to testify publicly on the legality of
warantless eavesdropping on telephone conversations between suspected
terrorists and people in the United States.
A prominent conservative on the committee said he is troubled by the legal
arguments the Bush administration has presented for establishing the National
Security Agency program.
President Bush has pointed to the congressional resolution that authorized
him to use force against Iraq as allowing him to order the program.
But GOP Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas said, "There was no discussion in
anything that I was around that gave the president a broad surveillance
authority with that resolution."
The committee chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said senators will
examine that issue and other legal questions in hearings scheduled for early
February. Gonzales' testimony is being sought because he is the principal
spokesman for the administration's position, Specter said.
The attorney general was White House counsel when Bush initiated the
program, a role that could raise issues of attorney-client privilege in seeking
his testimony. A message left with the Justice Department on Sunday was not
immediately returned.
Asked on CBS's "Face the Nation" if Gonzales had agreed to appear, Specter
said, "Well, I didn't ask him if he had agreed. I told him we were holding the
hearings and he didn't object. I don't think he has a whole lot of choice on
testifying."
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called for former Attorney General John
Ashcroft and former Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey to testify at the
hearings. "It would render these hearings useless and prevent the American
people from getting to the bottom of this if the administration invoked
executive privilege," Schumer, a committee member, said in a statement.
Ashcroft and Comey headed the Justice Department when the surveillance
program was started and were asked by the White House to sign off on it.
Academics and others will be asked to appear, part of a list of witnesses
"who think the president was right and people who think the president was
wrong," Specter said.
Slightly more than half of Americans, 56 percent, want the administration to
obtain court approval before tapping into conversations inside the United
States even if suspected terrorists are involved, according to an AP-Ipsos poll
conducted last week. About four out of 10 agreed with the White House that
court approval isn't necessary.
Brownback, on ABC's "This Week," said the Senate Intelligence Committee also
will hold hearings _ closed to the public _ on the NSA program.
"I think this is something that bears looking into and us to be able to
establish a policy within constitutional frameworks of what a president can or
cannot do," said Brownback, considered a presidential hopeful for 2008.
He said he was "troubled by what the basis for the grounds that the
administration says that they did these on, the legal basis, and I think we
need to look at that far more broadly and understand it a great deal."
The top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee said the hearings would provide
the type of oversight that has been lacking.
"No matter who is in power, there should be real oversight," said Vermont
Sen. Patrick Leahy.
Leahy also dismissed Bush's argument that the prewar resolution allowed him
to institute the secret program.
"We made it very clear what the president could do ... also made it very
clear what the president could not do. And he cannot do illegal spying on
Americans," Leahy said.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., another Judiciary Committee member, said he
agreed with those who believe wartime "is not a blank check to a president to
override the rights and liberties that are in the Constitution of the United
States."
Kennedy added, "I don't believe that this president understands that."
After a story reporting the existence of the program appeared in The New
York Times in December, Bush acknowledged that he had authorized the NSA to
eavesdrop on conversations involving suspected terrorists in the months after
the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He contended that his constitutional powers and
the prewar resolution gave him that legal authority.
The NSA program bypassed the special court that Congress established in 1978
to approve or reject secret surveillance or searches of foreigners and U.S.
citizens suspected of terrorism or espionage.
The administration informed top members of Congress of the NSA program and,
according to the president, administration officials regularly review its
authorization.
Still, many members of Congress _ Republicans as well as Democrats _ have
questioned whether the NSA program is outside the law.
|