After weeks of insisting it would not reveal details of its
eavesdropping without warrants, the White House reversed course
Wednesday and provided a House committee with highly classified
information about the operations.
The White House has been under heavy pressure from lawmakers who
wanted more information about the National Security Agency's
monitoring. Democrats and many Republicans rejected the
administration's implicit suggestion that they could not be trusted
with national security secrets.
The shift came after Rep. Heather Wilson, chairwoman of a House
intelligence subcommittee that oversees the NSA, broke with the
Bush administration and called for a full review of the NSA's
program, along with legislative action to update the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act.
She and others also wanted the full House Intelligence Committee
to be briefed on the program's operational details. Although the
White House initially promised only information about the legal
rationale for surveillance, administration officials broadened the
scope Wednesday to include more sensitive details about how the
program works.
"I think we've had a tremendous impact today," Wilson said at a
news conference as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Gen.
Michael Hayden, the nation's No. 2 intelligence official, briefed
the full Intelligence Committee.
"I don't think the White House would have made the decision that
it did had I not stood up and said, 'You must brief the
Intelligence Committee,'" she said.
When asked what prompted the move to give lawmakers more
details, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino the administration
stated "from the beginning that we will work with members of
Congress, and we will continue to do so regarding this vital
national security program."
At least one Democrat left the four-hour House session saying he
had a better understanding of legal and operational aspects of the
anti-terrorist surveillance program, being conducted without
warrants. But he said he still had a number of questions.
"It's a different program than I was beginning to let myself
believe," said Alabama Rep. Bud Cramer, the senior Democrat on the
Intelligence Committee's oversight subcommittee.
"This may be a valuable program," Cramer said, adding that he
didn't know if it was legal. "My direction of thinking was changed
tremendously."
Still, Cramer said, some members remain angry and frustrated,
and he didn't know why the White House waited so long to inform
Congress of its actions.
Lawmakers leaving the briefing said it covered the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, Justice Department papers outlining
legal justifications for the operations, limited details on success
stories and some highly sensitive details.
The White House has insisted that it has the legal authority to
monitor terror-related international communications in cases in
which one party to the call is in the United States.
For more than 50 days, senior officials have argued that
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were within the law
when they chose to brief only the eight lawmakers who lead the
House and Senate and its intelligence committees.
In a PBS interview Tuesday, Cheney said that if all 70 members
of the House and Senate intelligence committees were briefed over
the program's four years, "it's not a good way to keep a
secret."
House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., one of the
eight fully briefed, said that he still knows more about the
program than the rest of the committee. But, he said, "there is
very little left to the imagination" of those members who attended
the briefing.
Said California Rep. Jane Harman, the panel's top Democrat: "The
ice is melting, and we are making progress."
While Harman continues to support the program, she said she is
still uncomfortable with the administration's legal justification.
Harman believes the administration should have used the court
processes set up under the FISA law and gotten warrants.
Wilson, Harman and other committee members want to hold hearings
on that law to review whether it should be updated. Hoekstra said
he was open to hearings on the law but said such a review should
"nothing to do" with the president's program.
(Chinadaily.com via agencies February 9, 2006)
