Washington – President Bush has personally authorized a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States more than three dozen times since October 2001, a senior intelligence official told The Associated Press on Friday night.
The disclosure follows angry demands by lawmakers earlier in the day for a congressional inquiry into whether the monitoring by the highly secretive National Security Agency violated civil liberties.
“There is no doubt that this is inappropriate,” declared Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He promised hearings early next year.
In a broad defense of the program put forward hours later, a senior intelligence official said the eavesdropping was narrowly designed to go after possible terrorist threats in the United States. The official said that, since October 2001, authorization for the program has been renewed more than three dozen times. On each occasion, the lawfulness of the program is certified by the president’s legal counsel and the attorney general. It is then personally signed by Bush.
The revelation came hours after members of Congress from both parties expressed outrage Friday over reports that Bush launched the secret domestic surveillance program in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The surveillance operation was disclosed Friday by The New York Times, which reported that the government has been monitoring phone calls and e-mail messages from the United States to foreign destinations without warrants for the past three years.
Democrats accused the administration of trampling constitutional rights in the name of national security.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D- Calif., said Bush may have broken the federal law restricting domestic surveillance and violated constitutional protections against intrusive searches by approving the wiretaps.
“We are a government of law. The Congress was never asked to give the president the kind of unilateral authority that appears to have been exercised,” she said.
Bush declined to discuss the substance of the newspaper report, but he said he tries to strike a balance between protecting Americans from terrorist attacks and safeguarding civil liberties.
“I think the point that Americans really want to know is twofold. One, are we doing everything we can to protect the people? And two, are we protecting civil liberties as we do so? And my answer to both questions is yes, we are,” Bush said in an interview with PBS anchorman Jim Lehrer.
The domestic surveillance effort – a significant departure from previous practice – is in keeping with Bush’s aggressive approach to potential terrorist threats.
The president has faced similar criticism in the past over the treatment of terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility; the practice of sending suspects to third countries with a history of torture; and the establishment of secret interrogation facilities in Europe.
“This is a different kind of war,” he said in a speech shortly after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “Some victories will be won outside of public view, in tragedies avoided and threats eliminated. Other victories will be clear to all.”
According to The New York Times, Bush established the domestic surveillance program in 2002 by authorizing the National Security Agency to monitor international communications by terrorism suspects in the United States.
The secret presidential order relaxed safeguards intended to prohibit government spying on U.S. citizens.
Government officials told the newspaper that government eavesdroppers sought court-approved warrants only for conversations within the United States, not for overseas calls. The paper reported that “hundreds, perhaps thousands of people inside the United States” have been targeted for monitoring over the past three years.
Government officials told The New York Times that the clandestine program helped disrupt a planned 2003 attack on New York’s Brooklyn Bridge.
Knight Ridder Newspapers contributed to this report.
