WASHINGTON – President Bush personally authorized a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States more than three dozen times since October 2001, a senior intelligence official said Friday night.
The disclosure follows angry demands by lawmakers earlier in the day for a congressional inquiry into whether the monitoring by the highly secretive National Security Agency violated civil liberties.
“There is no doubt that this is inappropriate,” declared Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He promised hearings early in 2006.
Bush on Friday refused to discuss whether he authorized such domestic spying without obtaining warrants from a court, saying that to comment would tie his hands in fighting terrorists.
In a broad defense of the program put forward hours later, however, a senior intelligence official said the eavesdropping was narrowly designed to go after possible terrorist threats in the United States.
The official said that since October 2001, the program has been renewed more than 36 times. Each time, the White House counsel and the attorney general certified the lawfulness of the program, the official said. Bush then signed the authorization.
At each review, government officials provided a fresh assessment of the terrorist threat, showing that there was a catastrophic risk to the country or government, the official said.
“Only if those conditions apply do we even begin to think about this,” he said.
“The president has authorized NSA to fully use its resources – let me underscore this now – consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution to defend the United States and its citizens,” the official said, adding that congressional leaders were briefed more than a dozen times.
Senior officials said the president would do everything in his power to protect the American people while safeguarding civil liberties.
“I will make this point,” Bush said in an interview with PBS’ “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” “That whatever I do to protect the American people – and I have an obligation to do so – that we will uphold the law, and decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people.”
The surveillance, disclosed in Friday’s New York Times, allowed the agency to monitor international calls and e-mail messages of people inside the United States, according to the report.
But the paper said the agency would still seek warrants to snoop on purely domestic communications.
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