Jan. 18, 2007 - The Bush administration announced Wednesday that a secret court has authorized intelligence agencies to monitor suspected Al Qaeda phone calls into and out of the United States. As a result, administration officials said that President Bush will now put his controversial warrantless surveillance program, which he authorized without court approval after 9/11, under judicial supervision. The officials say he will abide by secret rules set down by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The news, made public in a letter sent by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, certainly seemed politically convenient for the White House. Today, Gonzales is scheduled to make his first public Judiciary Committee appearance before the new Democrat-controlled Senate, where he was expected to face tough questioning about warrantless wiretapping.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking minority member Arlen Specter have both criticized the Bush administration’s surveillance programs, and pledged to try to constrain such eavesdropping. The Justice Department’s letter to the Judiciary Committee indicated that the foreign intelligence court had actually issued its orders authorizing the eavesdropping program on Jan. 10. Privately, some congressional Democrats speculated that the administration held back word of the court rulings for a week so that it could be released for maximum impact right before Gonzales’s Capitol Hill appearance.
One Capitol Hill official familiar with Democratic thinking—who, like others quoted in this story didn’t want to be named talking about sensitive intelligence issues—said that the decision to put the program under court supervision amounts to “a significant reversal by this administration ... They’ve been telling us for more than a year that [the courts] aren’t flexible enough.” This official said congressional critics, including prominent Democrats, will want to know why the administration’s attitude toward working with the secret court changed—and why they did not work things out earlier. Congressional committees were also likely to ask tough questions about the domestic side of the surveillance program—including how it is run, who runs it and who decides which people to monitor, the official said.
In a conference call with journalists Wednesday, two senior Justice Department officials talked about the court rulings on condition of anonymity. They acknowledged that in light of the court decision, the administration hopes congressional critics will slow down or abandon efforts to curtail or regulate the surveillance programs.
Maybe I'm being a little suspicious here, but this administration does not back down lightly from a fight. And there is a fight brewing here. Congressional Democrats were planning to open hearings and investigations into Bush's warrantless, domestic spying program. And these investigations would include congressional subpoena power of White House documents--I'm not sure if the Bush White House would have been able to win a constitutional fight with Congress on this one issue. So the Bush White House throws a bone at the congressional watchdogs. The Bush administration agrees to place this NSA wiretapping program under the FISA courts, while hoping that the watchdogs would cut back on their investigations. This makes me wonder what else is the NSA spying on here, especially in terms of the internet, web browsing, keystrokes, emails, or who knows what else?
Here is a copy of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Through Talking Points Memo.
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