Bush says U.S. not ‘trolling through personal lives’

05/11/2006

USA Today reports NSA building massive phone records database

Thursday, May 11, 2006; Posted: 4:04 p.m. EDT (20:04 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN)—President Bush said Thursday the government is “not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans” with a reported program to create a massive database of U.S. phone calls.

“Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates,” Bush said. “The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities.”

Bush’s comments came after USA Today reported Thursday that three telecommunication firms provided the National Security Agency with domestic telephone call records from millions of Americans beginning shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Bush did not specifically mention the newspaper’s report.

In response to the USA Today article, NSA spokesman Don Weber issued a statement saying, “Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide.

“However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law.”

The report comes at an awkward time for CIA director nominee Gen. Michael Hayden, whom President Bush named this week to replace Porter Goss as head of the spy agency. Hayden, whose confirmation hearings are to begin next Thursday, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. Hayden on Thursday met with Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican whip, about his nomination.

Afterward, Hayden refused to comment about the report when meeting with reporters but said, “Everything that NSA does is lawful and very carefully done, and the appropriate members of the Congress—both House and Senate—are briefed on all NSA activities.”

Lawmakers concerned

Members of Congress expressed concern Thursday about the report.

“It’s our government, government of every single American—Republican, Democrat or independent,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “… Those entrusted with great power have a duty to answer to Americans what they are doing.”

In the House, Majority Leader Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, “I’m concerned about what I read with regard to the NSA database of phone calls. ... I’m not sure why it’s necessary to us to keep and have that kind of information.”

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said he would call on representatives from the companies named in the USA Today story; AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth; to testify.

However, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, told reporters he “strongly” agrees that the program is necessary, and said, “We’ll discuss whether hearings are necessary.”

In the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, asked Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, for hearings into the program during a Thursday afternoon meeting.

Pelosi said the hearings should be conducted by the House Intelligence Committee because “those people have the clearance.”

Pelosi declined to say how Hastert responded to her request.

The president said in his statement that the intelligence activities he authorized “are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said she had been briefed on the NSA program during a closed subcommittee hearing.

She said it’s “fair to say that what was in the newspaper this morning is not content collection. ... Nonetheless, I happen to believe we’re on our way to a major constitutional confrontation on Fourth Amendment guarantees of
unreasonable search and seizure.”

Conservatives defend program

However, during a morning session, Republican members of the committee defended the legality and necessity of such a database.

The USA Today report said the program did not involve the NSA “listening to or recording conversations,” a point that Sen. Jeff Sessions touched on.

“No recordings and no conversations were intercepted here, so there was no wiretapping here,” the Alabama Republican said.

“The president after 9/11 told the American people he was going to use the powers given to him to protect this country. ... It’s not a warrantless wiretapping of the American people,” Sessions said.

Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona also faulted the revelation of the program as harmful to national security.

“This is nuts,” Kyl said. “We are in a war and we’ve go to collect intelligence on the enemy, and you can’t tell the enemy in advance how you are going to do it. And discussing all of this in public leads to that.”

But Leahy, a vocal critic of the wiretapping program, praised the USA Today report, saying “it’s a sorry state” that the committee will have to call on the telecom companies for the information.

“We have to do that because our own government won’t answer questions,” Leahy said. “Neither this committee nor any committee in the House or in the Senate has gotten adequate answers. ...

“The press is doing our work for us, and we should be ashamed.”

Hayden nomination to proceed

Despite the controversy, the White House intends to go “full steam ahead” with Hayden’s nomination, Reuters reported.

“I think General Hayden has had a really good start to his confirmation process. He’s met with several members, the feedback is positive and we’re full steam ahead on his nomination,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters while traveling with President Bush to Mississippi.

Feinstein—who supports Hayden’s nomination—said the information will “present a growing impediment” to his confirmation, a development she said she regretted.

Facing Senate confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 18, Hayden’s meeting today with Republican Sens. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were canceled.

The meeting with Santorum has been tentatively rescheduled for Tuesday afternoon, said Santorum aide Robert Traynham. “But the White House called it very tentative,” Traynham said.

The report comes months after the Bush administration came under criticism on Capitol Hill for ordering an NSA surveillance program, that allowed communication to be monitored between people in the United States and terrorism suspects overseas without a court order.

Hayden headed the NSA when the wiretapping program was launched in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

President Bush has argued that the resolution authorizing military action after the 9/11 attacks, along with his authority as commander-in-chief of the military, give him the power to initiate the program without a court order, as a 1978 law requires.

Investigation dropped

The Justice Department has been denied security clearances for access to information, which prompted it to drop an investigation into the program. (Full story)

The Democrats’ No. 2 member of the Senate, Sen. Richard Durbin, called the development “evidence of a cover-up.”

“The fact ... that the Department of Justice has abandoned their own investigation of this administration’s wrongdoing because there’s been a refusal to give investigators security clearances is clear evidence of a cover-up within the administration.”

Last month, a former AT&T technician said in a sealed court document filed in federal court that the company cooperated with NSA to install equipment for “vacuum cleaner surveillance” of e-mail messages and Internet traffic, according to his lawyer.

Attorney Miles Ehrlich of Berkeley, California, told CNN that his client, Mark Klein, said there is a special room inside an AT&T building in San Francisco that is entirely controlled by NSA personnel and contains equipment that can sift through large amounts of Internet traffic.