WASHINGTON — Members of Congress demanded Friday that President Bush and his administration explain his decision to permit the country's most secretive intelligence agency to spy on American citizens in the United States after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks without first obtaining warrants.
Democrats and some Republicans denounced the administration's action, describing it as an example of Bush's use of the threat of terrorism to assume new legal and intelligence powers and to limit civil liberties.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday February 15, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 51 words Type of Material: Correction
Terrorism conviction -- An article in Friday's Section A, as well as four previous articles, about an Ohio truck driver's terrorism conviction said Iyman Faris pleaded guilty in 2003 to collaborating with Al Qaeda in a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. The plot involved severing the bridge's suspension cables.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he would call congressional hearings as soon as possible. Warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens is "wrong, and it can't be condoned at all," he said.
According to former officials familiar with the policy, Bush signed an executive order in 2002 granting new surveillance powers to the National Security Agency -- the branch of the U.S. intelligence services responsible for international eavesdropping, and whose existence was long denied by the government.
"I want to know precisely what they did: how NSA utilized their technical equipment, whose conversations they overheard, how many conversations they overheard, what they did with the material, what purported justification there was ... and we will go from there," Specter said.
After the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the administration sought to ease the restrictions on wiretaps and e-mail surveillance to investigate U.S. citizens suspected of having ties to terrorists. Ordinarily, the government must gain permission from special courts to turn its surveillance on U.S. citizens, either domestically or overseas.
The surveillance operation was first reported by the New York Times.
"If this article is accurate, it calls into question the integrity and credibility of our nation's commitment to the rule of law," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the intelligence and judiciary committees.
The president and his aides moved quickly Friday to try to contain the controversy.
Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol Hill to confer with the leaders of both chambers as well as the chairman and top Democrat on each of the intelligence panels. Those present refused to discuss the session.
In a TV interview, Bush said he could not talk about the matter. "We do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country, and the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them," he said on PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."
