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| Roberts endorses NSA program |
| 2006-02-04 |
| The Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee on Friday endorsed President George W. Bush's domestic surveillance program and said the White House was right to inform only a handful of lawmakers about its existence. In a letter to the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas expressed "strong support" for a program that has raised an outcry from Democrats and some Republicans who believe Bush may have overstepped his authority. The panel is to hear testimony Monday from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the issue. Roberts said he believes Bush's use of warrantless surveillance is legal, necessary, reasonable and within the president's powers. "I am confident the president retains the constitutional authority to conduct 'warrantless' electronic surveillance," he said in the 19-page letter addressed to the judiciary panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and its senior Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. The administration, which refers to the eavesdropping as a limited "terrorist surveillance program," says it is justified by Bush's constitutional authority as commander in chief and by the authorization of military force that Congress granted the president after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. Democrats and other critics say the NSA program could violate constitutional protections against unreasonable searches, as well as the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to seek wiretap warrants from a secret court even during times of war. Roberts' office released the letter a day after Democrats on his committee aired concerns that the oversight panel and the intelligence community had become part of a White House public relations campaign to defend the NSA program. "The question I am wrestling with is whether the very independence of the U.S. intelligence committee has been co-opted — to be quite honest about it — by the strong, controlling hand of the White House," Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, said at Thursday's hearing. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |