WASHINGTON — President Bush's decision to bypass court review and authorize domestic wiretapping by executive order was part of a concerted effort to rebuild presidential powers weakened in the 1970s as a result of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday.
Returning from a trip to the Middle East, Cheney said that threats facing the country required that the president's authority under the Constitution be "unimpaired."
"Watergate and a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both during the 1970s, served, I think, to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area," Cheney told reporters traveling with him on Air Force Two. "Especially in the day and age we live in ... the president of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy."
Cheney's remarks were recorded by reporters traveling with him and disseminated by the White House under an official pool arrangement.
Cheney dismissed the idea that Americans were concerned about a potential abuse of power by the administration, saying that any backlash would probably punish the president's critics, not Bush.
"The president and I believe very deeply that there is a hell of a threat," Cheney said, calculating that "the vast majority" of Americans supported the administration's surveillance policies.
"And so if there's a backlash pending, I think the backlash is going to be against those who are suggesting somehow we shouldn't take these steps in order to defend the country."
On Capitol Hill, however, calls for a congressional investigation escalated, with a group of Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee asking to join hearings scheduled by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she had written to several constitutional scholars to ask whether Bush had committed an impeachable offense by ordering the National Security Agency in 2002 to engage in surveillance within the United States without a court order.
Lawmakers continued to trade claims and accusations over whether they were informed about the spy program by the administration, whether they properly registered civil liberties objections, and whether their objections mattered.
