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Powell defends Bush on surveillance
Former secretary of state Colin Powell has defended the US administration arguing there was "nothing wrong" with President George Bush's not seeking warrants before engaging in domestic spying."I see absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorising these kinds of actions," Powell told ABC television Sunday after revelations last week that Bush authorised the National Security Agency to intercept communications by Americans with no approval from a special foreign intelligence court. "The president made a determination that he had sufficient authority from the Congress to do this in the way that he did it, without getting warrants from the courts or reporting to the courts after doing it," Powell said. "And the Congress will have to make a judgment as to whether or not they think the president was using the law correctly or not." Though Powell said he was not aware of the operations, he said "my own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants. "Even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that. And then, three days later, you let the court know what you have done and deal with it that way," Powell said. But "for reasons that the president has discussed and the attorney general has spoken to, they chose not to do it that way." Asked if such spying should continue, Powell said: "Yes, of course it should continue." US media also reported that the government runs a secret program to monitor homes, workplaces and mosques of Muslims in six US cities for signs of possible nuclear radiation. Both programs involve surveillance without search warrants or court orders, and agents who questioned the legality of the practise were allegedly rebuked, according to the news magazine US News and World Report. The federal government had previously said it had installed radiation-detection equipment at ports, subway stations and other public sites. The reports revealed that surveillance of private property was also under way. Bush and his top aides have stressed that the order for eavesdropping was limited to those suspected of ties to Al-Qaeda. But the latest reports about vetting vast amounts of data indicate the spying is more far-reaching. In its effort to track terrorist threats, the Bush administration has secured groundbreaking cooperation from major telecommunications companies, which have passed along information on calling patterns from a large volume of telephone traffic to the NSA, according to US media reports. Similar revelations about domestic spying led to legislation in the 1970s that allows for wiretapping but requires government agencies to obtain a warrant from a special court. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-12-26 |
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