Washington – President Bush personally blocked an internal Justice Department investigation of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program this year, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday.
The review had been requested by Democratic critics of the program, and Justice Department lawyers said in April that they were denied the security clearances needed to conduct the review. The administration had not acknowledged until now that it was Bush’s decision to thwart the investigation.
The denial of security clearances to lawyers from the Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews ethical and legal conduct at the department, has frustrated critics, including Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who had been pushing for a court examination of the program.
Under questioning from Specter at a Judiciary hearing Tuesday, Gonzales indicated that Bush made the decision to deny Justice Department lawyers access to information about the NSA program.
Gonzales would not say why the clearances were denied, but White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters that the president felt the review by the Office of Professional Responsibility was unnecessary because the program had undergone other reviews.
“You need to keep the number of people exposed to it tight for reasons of national security. And that’s what (Bush) did,” said Snow.
An internal Justice Department memo in April, released Tuesday, said the administration had granted clearances to a “large team of attorneys and FBI agents” to investigate news leaks of the NSA program. Lawyers defending the department against lawsuits over the program also had no trouble gaining clearance, the memo said.
“With so many other lawyers in the Department of Justice being granted clearance, it raises the obvious question of whether there was some interest on the part of the administration in not having that opinion given,” Specter said.
Legal scholars said the president has the authority to deny security clearances to government officials, unless Congress passes a law saying he cannot.
