Panel, official spar on spying

WASHINGTON – Al-Qaida is the leading terrorism threat to the United States, followed by the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, the nation’s intelligence chief said Thursday in a forum that turned into a debate on government eavesdropping.

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte tried to focus on terrorist threats, but lawmakers repeatedly returned to the uproar surrounding the National Security Agency’s surveillance program.

West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Intelligence Committee’s senior Democrat, called the operations the largest NSA program within the United States in history. He accused the Bush administration of using the program politically while keeping the vast majority of Congress “in the dark.”

Negroponte and his top deputy, Gen. Michael Hayden, fiercely defended President Bush’s authorization allowing the NSA to eavesdrop – without first obtaining warrants – on international communications of people on U.S. soil who may be linked to al-Qaida.

Negroponte stressed the importance of Iraq on the global jihad.

If jihadists there thwart Iraq’s attempts to set up a stable government, he said, “they could secure an operational base in Iraq and inspire sympathizers elsewhere to move beyond rhetoric to attempt attacks” around the world, including the United States.

On Iran, Negroponte said leaders there seek a Shiite-dominated government in Iraq and are providing support to certain Iraqi Shiite political and military groups. He blamed Tehran for “at least some” of the increasing lethality of attacks by providing Shiite militants with increasingly sophisticated improvised explosive devices.

He reiterated the intelligence community’s assessment that, after more than 20 years of clandestine work, Tehran “probably has not yet” produced a nuclear weapon or obtained fissile material. But the risk that it will acquire the weapons and merge them with its existing ballistic missile systems “is a reason for immediate concern.”

On North Korea, which boasts of having nuclear weapons, Negroponte said those claims are “probably true.” He said the government there sees nuclear weapons as the best way to ensure security, prestige and economic gain.

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