WASHINGTON — A Senate committee investigating the Bush administration's domestic wiretapping program subpoenaed the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Justice Department on Wednesday for information regarding their legal justification for the warrantless secret surveillance.
The subpoenas by the Judiciary Committee set the stage for another legal and political battle between Senate Democrats and the Bush administration over its counterterrorism and law enforcement policies. Earlier subpoenas issued by Democratic lawmakers to current and former White House officials have essentially been ignored.
Legal experts suggested Wednesday that the administration would fight or ignore these subpoenas, too, throwing the issue into federal court, perhaps even the Supreme Court. The ultimate outcome, they said, could be an out-of-court compromise that gives lawmakers at least some insight into the legal machinations surrounding the top-secret National Security Agency program.
President Bush authorized the domestic surveillance program soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, allowing the NSA to monitor international phone calls and e-mails to or from the United States involving people that authorities suspected of having links to terrorists.
In letters accompanying the subpoenas, Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said the panel had made at least nine formal requests for such documentation from the White House and the Justice Department, but all were rebuffed.
Moreover, Leahy said in the letters that attempts to get senior administration officials to testify before Congress on the legality of wiretapping "have been met with a consistent pattern of evasion and misdirection."
Leahy noted that the Judiciary Committee was not seeking operational details of the program, which remains highly classified. But he said the committee was charged with oversight of the executive branch in the areas of constitutional protections and the civil liberties of Americans.
"The warrantless electronic surveillance program directly impacts those responsibilities," Leahy wrote. "We cannot conduct this oversight without knowing the legal arguments the Administration has used to justify interception of the communications of Americans without a warrant."
