|
Most Congressmen told of easedropping program agreed with it
As members of Congress seek more information about the eavesdropping program authorized by President Bush, their requests are being complicated by the fact that Congressional leaders in both parties acquiesced in the operation.Only the Senate Judiciary Committee, under Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, has pledged to hold hearings on the program, which was first publicly disclosed a week ago. Democrats are urging that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees conduct inquiries, but the Republicans who control those panels have not agreed to do so. Some Republicans are suggesting that it is disingenuous to complain now about the eavesdropping effort. "The record is clear; Congressional leaders at a minimum tacitly supported the program," Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the chairman of House Intelligence Committee, said this week. Mr. Hoekstra said Democrats should "attempt to understand why their leaders did not feel the same sense of outrage about the program" that some in the party are now expressing. Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said only that he is "currently in discussions with Senate leadership to determine what form additional oversight should take." Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, released a letter this week that he sent to Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 expressing concern about the program. But Senator Roberts issued a statement on Tuesday saying that he had "no recollection of Senator Rockefeller objecting to the program at the many briefings he and I attended together," and that "on many occasions Senator Rockefeller expressed to the vice president his vocal support for the program; his most recent expression of support was only two weeks ago." At least seven Democratic lawmakers are known to have been briefed about the program since its inception in 2001, and only two, Mr. Rockefeller and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, are known to have expressed written concern about it. A third, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the former Senate Democratic leader, said in an e-mail message on Thursday that he too had expressed "grave concern for this practice" of eavesdropping on American citizens inside the United States. Among the others, Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, acknowledged in a statement this week that she had been briefed about the program since 2003 and regarded it as "essential to U.S. national security." Ms. Harman also said, however, that she was "deeply concerned by reports that this program in fact goes far beyond the measures to target Al Qaeda about which I was briefed." Congressional aides from both parties said Thursday that their leaders were weighing a number of options for further inquiries into the matter. In the Senate, Mr. Specter and Mr. Roberts were said to be talking with Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, about a possible division of labor between their committees. But they said it was unlikely that any hearings would be held until Congress convenes again in late January. The program, authorized by President Bush, involves eavesdropping without warrants on international communications involving American citizens in the United States. Critics, including Mr. Specter, have expressed doubts about whether the program was legal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a question he says should be explored by the Judiciary Committee, even if there is a separate review by the Congressional intelligence panels. Among the options being weighed are parallel inquiries, in which the Judiciary Committee in the Senate would hold open hearings, beginning with testimony by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, while the Senate Intelligence Committee would hold closed hearings to explore the classified details of the intelligence-gathering operation. Another course proposed by some lawmakers would consolidate any inquiry so that it would be conducted jointly by the judiciary and intelligence panels. Members of Congress who were not previously briefed about the program have been far more vociferous in expressing opposition to it. One of them, Representative Rush D. Holt of New Jersey, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the administration had shown "absolute contempt for Congressional oversight by concealing, for years after the fact and from all but a tiny handful of House and Senate leaders, its use of the National Security Agency to spy on Americans." The White House has said the dozen or so briefings about the program it provided to a small group of Congressional leaders were intended to provide notification, not to seek the lawmakers' consent. None among the seven Republicans known to have been briefed have expressed any opposition to the program. The three Democratic members of Congress who have said publicly this week that they had objected to the program have said there was no indication that their objections were heeded. Ms. Pelosi, a former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee who is now the House Democratic leader, has said that she, like Mr. Rockefeller, expressed her concerns in a letter to the administration. But Ms. Pelosi has said that she cannot make the letter public until the administration agrees to declassify it. Mr. Daschle, in his e-mail message, said he had "expressed my concern during the briefing," rather than in written form, and declined to discuss the timing of his action. In addition to Ms. Harman, the Democrats who have said they did not express objections when they were briefed on the program include Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, and Bob Graham, the former Democratic senator from Florida who served as Intelligence Committee chairman. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the former Democratic leader in the House, has not responded to telephone messages requesting comment. Ms. Harman, Mr. Reid and Mr. Graham have all suggested in recent days that they were not provided with a complete accounting of the program, and that they might have raised objections if they had understood its scope. The administration has said the surveillance program was limited to communications between the United States and points overseas, but Ms. Harman has expressed particular concern about "domestic-to-domestic surveillance" that technical experts say would almost certainly have occurred, in the form of telephone conversations or e-mail messages intercepted inadvertently. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-12-23 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=138168 |