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White House gives details on surveillance
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-09 09:03
After weeks of insisting it would not reveal details of its eavesdropping
without warrants, the White House reversed course Wednesday and provided a House
committee with highly classified information about the operations.
The White House has been under heavy pressure from lawmakers who wanted more
information about the National Security Agency's monitoring. Democrats and many
Republicans rejected the administration's implicit suggestion that they could
not be trusted with national security secrets.
The shift came after Rep. Heather Wilson, chairwoman of a House intelligence
subcommittee that oversees the NSA, broke with the Bush administration and
called for a full review of the NSA's program, along with legislative action to
update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
She and others also wanted the full House Intelligence Committee to be
briefed on the program's operational details. Although the White House initially
promised only information about the legal rationale for surveillance,
administration officials broadened the scope Wednesday to include more sensitive
details about how the program works.
"I think we've had a tremendous impact today," Wilson said at a news
conference as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Gen. Michael Hayden, the
nation's No. 2 intelligence official, briefed the full Intelligence Committee.
"I don't think the White House would have made the decision that it did had I
not stood up and said, 'You must brief the Intelligence Committee,'" she said.
When asked what prompted the move to give lawmakers more details, White House
spokeswoman Dana Perino the administration stated "from the beginning that we
will work with members of Congress, and we will continue to do so regarding this
vital national security program."
At least one Democrat left the four-hour House session saying he had a better
understanding of legal and operational aspects of the anti-terrorist
surveillance program, being conducted without warrants. But he said he still had
a number of questions.
"It's a different program than I was beginning to let myself believe," said
Alabama Rep. Bud Cramer, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee's
oversight subcommittee.
"This may be a valuable program," Cramer said, adding that he didn't know if
it was legal. "My direction of thinking was changed tremendously."
Still, Cramer said, some members remain angry and frustrated, and he didn't
know why the White House waited so long to inform Congress of its actions.
Lawmakers leaving the briefing said it covered the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, Justice Department papers outlining legal justifications for
the operations, limited details on success stories and some highly sensitive
details.
The White House has insisted that it has the legal authority to monitor
terror-related international communications in cases in which one party to the
call is in the United States.
For more than 50 days, senior officials have argued that President Bush and
Vice President Dick Cheney were within the law when they chose to brief only the
eight lawmakers who lead the House and Senate and its intelligence committees.
In a PBS interview Tuesday, Cheney said that if all 70 members of the House
and Senate intelligence committees were briefed over the program's four years,
"it's not a good way to keep a secret."
House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., one of the eight fully
briefed, said that he still knows more about the program than the rest of the
committee. But, he said, "there is very little left to the imagination" of those
members who attended the briefing.
Said California Rep. Jane Harman, the panel's top Democrat: "The ice is
melting, and we are making progress."
While Harman continues to support the program, she said she is still
uncomfortable with the administration's legal justification. Harman believes the
administration should have used the court processes set up under the FISA law
and gotten warrants.
Wilson, Harman and other committee members want to hold hearings on that law
to review whether it should be updated. Hoekstra said he was open to hearings on
the law but said such a review should "nothing to do" with the president's
program.
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