Washington – The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday he has asked Attorney General Alberto Gon zales to testify publicly on the legality of warrantless 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 that 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 Sen. Sam Brownback, R- Kan., 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.
Gonzales 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.
