WASHINGTON — The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee lashed out at Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday, accusing the vice president of secretly lobbying other GOP members of the committee to block hearings on the administration's domestic surveillance program.
In an unusually sharp attack, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said Cheney had gone behind his back in an effort to persuade other committee members to derail his plans to require telecommunications companies to testify on whether they secretly gave U.S. spy agencies vast quantities of data on customer phone calls.
"I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some point," Specter said in a letter sent to Cheney on Wednesday.
Specter said he learned of Cheney's efforts from Republican members who had been approached by the vice president. His decision to confront Cheney represents an unusually public rupture between a senior GOP lawmaker and the White House. It also provides a rare public glimpse of the tactics employed by a vice president who prefers to operate behind the scenes.
Specter said Cheney's apparent effort to bypass the committee chairman was "especially perplexing" because the two had attended a Republican caucus lunch together on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
"I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table," Specter said.
Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president had not yet studied Specter's letter. In an e-mail, she reiterated the administration's position that no new legislation was needed to carry out the terrorist surveillance program.
"We will continue to work with Congress in good faith and listen to ideas of legislators," McBride said. "We will ultimately have to make a decision as an administration on whether any particular legislation would enhance our ability to protect Americans against terrorists."
Specter has been one of the most outspoken Republican critics of the Bush administration's efforts to gather intelligence on U.S. residents without court warrants.
In recent months, news reports have laid out programs in which the National Security Agency has eavesdropped on international phone calls of U.S. residents, and assembled calling records on tens of millions of Americans, in an effort to identify domestic terrorist threats.
