Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday President Bush’s secret order to allow spying on people in the United States was legal and necessary to prevent terrorism, but lawmakers from both parties called for Congress to investigate.
Rice, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” said disclosure of the eavesdropping could jeopardize terrorism investigations.
“The more we get the exposure of these very sensitive programs, the more it undermines our ability to follow terrorists, to know about their activities,” she said.
Rice said Bush used his authority so “people could not communicate inside the United States about terrorist activity with people outside the United States, leaving us vulnerable to terrorist attack.”
After initially refusing to comment on a New York Times report on the covert program, Bush said Saturday that after the Sept. 11 attacks, he had authorized the National Security Agency “to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.”
Rice reiterated Bush’s statement that the wiretapping of telephone conversations and other communications was legal and did not violate the U.S. Constitution.
A 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without court approval.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rice said the program was carefully controlled, with a limited scope focusing only on those believed to have links to al Qaeda terrorists.
Lawmakers concerned
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid disputed Bush’s contention that members of Congress had been informed.
Reid was one of several lawmakers of both parties who have backed a planned hearing on the issue by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican. Many lawmakers have questioned whether domestic spying violates the U.S. Constitution.
“Congress has not been involved in setting up this program. This is totally a program of the president and the vice president of the United States,” Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said on Fox. He said he was briefed on it only a few months ago, long after the program was reported to have been started.
Specter said he wanted to know what legal authority the White House had used. “Let’s not jump to too many conclusions. Let’s look at it analytically. Let’s have oversight hearings. And let’s find out exactly what went on,” he said on CNN’s ”Late Edition.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina echoed the call for an investigation and said he knew of no legal basis for the White House to circumvent existing laws. “It is about winning the war, adhering to the values that we’re fighting for. And you can’t set those values aside in the name of expediency,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
‘I don't know why he didn't’
Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said, “I take him (Bush) at his word” that the order was critical to saving lives and consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution.”
“The president, I think, has the right to do this, and yet, I don’t know why he didn’t go” through court procedures, McCain told ABC’s “This Week.”
“I know that the leaders of Congress were consulted, and that’s a very important part of this equation,” McCain said.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said she was advised of Bush’s decision “shortly after he made it” and had been given several updates.
But Pelosi said in a statement Saturday night, “The Bush administration considered these briefings to be notification, not a request for approval. As is my practice whenever I am notified about intelligence activities, I expressed my strong concerns during these briefings.”
On Saturday, the president said he had reauthorized the eavesdropping program 30 times since Sept. 11 and intends to continue it “for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups.”