Washington – The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility has opened an internal investigation into the department’s role in approving the Bush administration’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, officials said Wednesday.
In addition, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signaled in an interview Wednesday that the administration will sharply limit the testimony of former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, both of whom have been asked to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the program.
“Clearly, there are privilege issues that have to be considered,” Gonzales said. “As a general matter, we would not be disclosing internal deliberations, internal recommendations. That’s not something we’d do as a general matter, whether or not you’re a current member of the administration or a former member of the administration.
“You have to wonder what could Messrs. Comey and Ashcroft add to the discussion,” Gonzales added.
In response to the comments Wednesday night, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he has asked Gonzales for permission to call Ashcroft and Comey to testify but has not received an answer.
“I’m not asking about internal memoranda or any internal discussions or any of those kind of documents which would have a chilling effect,” Specter said.
But he said he would expect Ashcroft and Comey to talk about the legal issues at play in the case, including debates within the administration that included a visit by Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr. to Ashcroft in a hospital bed in March 2004 in an effort to get him to approve the program after a top aide had refused. Ashcroft was waiting to have gallbladder surgery.
The remarks are among the latest developments in the debate over the National Security Agency program, first revealed in press reports in December.
President Bush and his aides have strongly defended the program as both lawful and necessary to track suspected al-Qaeda associates, but many legal scholars and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised doubts about the program’s legality.
In a letter to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., Office of Professional Responsibility counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote that his office had “initiated an investigation” into the Justice Department’s role in the NSA surveillance program.
The letter, dated Feb. 2 but not received by Hinchey until Wednesday, indicates the probe will include “whether such activities are permissible under existing law.”
But Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said the probe would be more limited: “They will not be making a determination on the lawfulness of the NSA program but rather will determine whether the department lawyers complied with their professional obligations in connection with that program.”
Hinchey, who requested the investigation along with three other House Democrats, said he welcomed a probe into “how President Bush went about creating this Big Brother program.”
Elsewhere in the Capitol on Wednesday, Democrats and Republicans skirmished on several fronts in the debate regarding proper congressional oversight of the eavesdropping program.
The House Judiciary Committee, voting largely along party lines, rejected a Democratic measure asking the attorney general to provide legal opinions and other documents related to the surveillance program. Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., was the only Republican to join the panel’s Democrats in supporting the proposal by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich.
The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote today on a Democratic proposal to launch a congressional inquiry into the NSA program.
One panel member, Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, opposes an investigation but wants legislation to exempt the eavesdropping program from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
