WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is launching an aggressive effort to persuade Americans that a controversial National Security Agency program of domestic eavesdropping without obtaining warrants is legal and justified.
With public opinion polls indicating that Americans are divided over the program, President Bush's top political lieutenants on Friday used the surveillance program as a weapon against Democrats during speeches to Republican activists.
The president and other senior administration officials had shied away from talking extensively about the NSA's program of monitoring certain telephone calls and other communications between Americans and people abroad.
Controversy erupted when the program, which Bush had secretly approved after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was revealed last month.
Now, taking advantage of public support for aggressive actions intended to head off terrorist strikes, the president and senior officials plan to make a series of speeches and visits next week in Washington and beyond. Their attempt to build support for the program comes two weeks before the Senate will address the issue in hearings.
Bush is expected to address the issue during a speech Monday in Kansas. At the same time, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence, who headed the NSA when the eavesdropping program was developed, is scheduled to speak at the National Press Club.
On Tuesday, Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales is to deliver a speech about the eavesdropping program, and on Wednesday, Bush plans to visit NSA headquarters, outside Washington.
"We are stepping up our efforts to educate the American people about this vital tool in the war on terrorism ahead of the congressional hearing scheduled for early February," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said.
"The American people want us to do everything in our power to prevent attacks," he added. "This is a critical tool that helps us save lives and prevent attacks."
Many Democrats say that Bush, by authorizing the NSA to intercept some phone calls without approval from a special court, violated the 1978 law regulating intelligence-gathering in the United States.
"Congress spent seven years considering and enacting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said Friday in a written statement. "It was not a hastily conceived idea.... Now, the administration has made a unilateral decision that congressional and judicial oversight can be discarded, in spite of what the law obviously requires. We need a thorough investigation of these activities."
