Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.
In a letter to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated weeks ago.
At least one constitutional scholar who testified before the committee said in an interview that Gonzales appeared to be hinting that the operation disclosed by the New York Times in mid-December is not the full extent of eavesdropping on U.S. residents conducted without court warrants.
"It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about," said Bruce Fein, a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations.
2 comments:
These semantic games are very helpful. When I first read of "warrentless domestic wiretapping" I assumed that the Bushies were willy-nilly tapping anybody in the US that they wanted. Then I was relieved to learn that the warrentless wiretapping applied only to domestic residents talking to people in islamist countries; essentially the same security measure that all previous presidents have taken in wartime. The only objection I find here is that there is no legislative oversight. Though no president has had that before, I do think that it's time to correct that, with the judiciary settling disputes between the executive administrators of the wiretaps and the legislative auditors.
But there are indications that the wiretapping is more extensive than previously revealled - perhaps beyond international calls. That is the point of the posted article. We'll just have to wait and see if they come forward with the additional targets of their espionage.
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