Gonzales defends Bush's revised domestic spying
Source: Reuters
By Thomas Ferraro and Deborah Charles WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was hammered by lawmakers on Thursday who demanded to know why the administration took more than five years to obtain court approval of its war-time domestic spying initiative. "I somewhat take issue ... with (Republican) Senator Arlen Specter's innuendo that this this is something we could have pulled off the shelf and done in a matter of days or weeks," Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "This is a very complicated application. We worked on it a long time." Gonzales announced an abrupt end to the warrantless electronic surveillance program on Wednesday, just two weeks after Democrats took control of the U.S. Congress, promising investigations as well as legislation to bring the program in line with the law. Critics have charged that Bush overstepped his authority after the Sept. 11 attacks with the domestic spying program along with other measures such as holding terrorism suspects indefinitely without charges, and interrogations that critics said amounted to torture. Gonzales said the Justice Department had reached an agreement with a secret court that would permit swift approval to monitor international communications. "We believe that the court's order will allow the necessary speed and agility that the government needs to protect our nation from a terrorist threat," Gonzales said. Specter of Pennsylvania, who headed the Judiciary Committee when Congress was controlled by Republicans the past two years, said the administration should have moved faster. "SENSE OF URGENCY" "I cannot help but conclude that there hasn't been a sufficient sense of urgency on behalf of the Department of Justice to get this job done faster," Specter said. Gonzales said after the deadly 2001 attacks, the administration looked at the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court approval to spy on U.S. citizens inside the United States. "We all concluded, there's no way we can do what we believe we have to do to protect the country under the strict reading of FISA," he said. In late 2001 Bush ordered the National Security Agency to conduct the program to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens without a warrant, if those wiretaps were made to track suspected al Qaeda operatives. When the program was first disclosed in December 2005, it drew fire from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress who charged it violated the rights of law-abiding citizens. Bush insisted he had inherent war-time presidential powers to order the spying program. However, Gonzales said the Justice Department stepped up efforts to bring it under FISA after it drew so many complaints. In a letter to congressional leaders on Wednesday, Gonzales said the program would not be renewed. Instead electronic surveillance would be subject to approval from the secret but independent FISA court, as demanded by Democrats in Congress and other critics. Analysts said the administration's reversal this week was an acknowledgment that it needed to comply with the law. "The timing of this announcement shows that the Bush administration is very worried that the new Congress will not ignore his illegal surveillance activities," said Joel Reidenberg, privacy expert and law professor at Fordham Law School. "Oversight of domestic spying, even by a secret court, is better than no oversight at all." Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, told Gonzales, "The issue has never been whether to monitor suspected terrorists, but doing it legally and with proper checks and balances." "This reversal is a good first step," Leahy said, while adding there are still unanswered questions about exactly how the program will work.
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