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Bush Propopses to Expand Domestic Spying Powers
International World Herald
By James Risen
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
WASHINGTON: Senior U.S. administration officials have
told the U.S. Congress that they could not promise
that the Bush administration would fulfill its January
pledge to continue to seek warrants from a secret
court for a domestic wiretapping program.
Rather, they argued that the president had the
constitutional authority to decide for himself whether
to conduct surveillance without warrants.
As a result of the agreement in January, the
administration said that the domestic spying program
of the National Security Agency had been brought under
the legal structure laid out in the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, which required
court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of U.S.
citizens and others within the United States.
But the senior officials, including Michael McConnell,
the new director of national intelligence, said
Tuesday that they believed the president still had the
authority under Article II of the U.S. Constitution to
once again order the NSA to conduct surveillance
inside the country without warrants.
During a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
McConnell was asked by Senator Russ Feingold, a
Democrat of Wisconsin, whether he could promise that
the administration no longer would sidestep the court
when seeking warrants.
"Sir, the president's authority under Article II is in
the Constitution," McConnell said. "So if the
president chose to exercise Article II authority, that
would be the president's call."
The administration earlier had argued that both the
president's inherent executive powers under Article II
of the Constitution, as well as the September 2001
congressional authorization to use military force
against Al Qaeda, provided him with the power to
conduct surveillance without warrants.
McConnell said that all domestic electronic
surveillance was being conducted with court-approved
warrants and that there were no plans "that we are
formulating or thinking about currently" to resume it
without warrants.
The administration seeks new legislation to update the
surveillance act to expand government surveillance
powers, in part to deal with changes in communications
technology since 1978, when the measure was enacted.
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