From the LA Times, January 21, 2006:
GOP Praises Eavesdropping
Program
Bush and his lieutenants promote surveillance
without a court order, and strategists will try to use the debate to paint
Democrats as weak.
By James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON ( The Bush administration is launching an aggressive
effort to persuade Americans that a controversial National Security Agency
program of domestic eavesdropping without obtaining warrants is legal and
justified.
With public opinion polls indicating that Americans are divided over the
program, President Bush’s top political lieutenants on Friday used the
surveillance program as a weapon against Democrats during speeches to
Republican activists.
The president and other senior administration officials had
shied away from talking extensively about the NSA’s program of monitoring
certain telephone calls and other communications between Americans and people
abroad.
Controversy erupted when the program, which Bush had secretly approved after
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was revealed last month.
Now, taking advantage of public support for aggressive actions intended to head
off terrorist strikes, the president and senior officials plan to make a series
of speeches and visits next week in Washington
and beyond. Their attempt to build support for the program comes two weeks
before the Senate will address the issue in hearings.
Bush is expected to address the issue during a speech Monday in Kansas.
At the same time, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the deputy director of national
intelligence, who headed the NSA when the eavesdropping program was developed,
is scheduled to speak at the National Press Club.
On Tuesday, Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales is to deliver a speech about the
eavesdropping program, and on Wednesday, Bush plans to visit NSA headquarters,
outside Washington.
“We are stepping up our efforts to educate the American people about this
vital tool in the war on terrorism ahead of the congressional hearing scheduled
for early February,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said.
“The American people want us to do everything in our power to prevent
attacks,” he added. “This is a critical tool that helps us save lives
and prevent attacks.”
Many Democrats say that Bush, by authorizing the NSA to intercept some phone
calls without approval from a special court, violated the 1978 law regulating
intelligence-gathering in the United States.
“Congress spent seven years considering and enacting the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said
Friday in a written statement. “It was not a hastily conceived idea) . Now,
the administration has made a unilateral decision that congressional and
judicial oversight can be discarded, in spite of what the law obviously requires.
We need a thorough investigation of these activities.”
In addition to the public efforts, Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a
briefing on the NSA program Friday with senior members of Congress, according
to congressional officials.
The administration’s public relations effort follows the release on Thursday of
a new legal analysis in which the Justice Department said that the president
had inherent power to order such warrantless surveillance, and that Congress
had confirmed and enhanced that power after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Beyond making its legal arguments, the administration is reaching out to the
court of public opinion. Republicans have discerned what they believe is the
program’s political potential.
Asked which is their greater concern, that the government’s anti-terrorism
policies had not gone far enough to protect the country or had gone too far in
restricting civil liberties, 46% of those surveyed in a recent poll said the
government had not done enough; 33% said it had gone too far.
The poll, conducted Jan. 4 through 8 by the Pew
Research Center
for the People and the Press, also found that 48% of respondents thought that
“monitoring Americans suspected of terrorist ties without court
permission” was “generally right,” and 47% thought it was
“generally wrong.”
In short, said Andrew Kohut, the center’s director, a surveillance program that
had drawn sharp criticism when it was first disclosed last month “has been
transformed from an accusation to a debatable issue.”
Support for the administration’s eavesdropping program, Kohut said,
“hinges on people seeing this as going after the bad guys” rather
than as an infringement on civil liberties.
Republicans contend the spying debate works in their favor, allowing them to
paint Democrats as weak on terrorism.
Ken Mehlman, Republican National Committee chairman, told reporters on the
sidelines of the GOP’s winter meeting here Friday that the program would be a
crucial element of the party’s strategy in the 2006 congressional campaign.
“One of the big choices before the American people in 2006 is: Where do
your leaders stand on this important tool?” Mehlman said, adding that he
planned “to talk about it a lot this year.”
Karl Rove, the president’s deputy chief of staff, spoke at length to the
Republican National Committee on the monitoring. “Let me be as clear as I
can be,” he said. “President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling
somebody in America,
it is in our national security interest to know who they are calling and why.
“Some important Democrats clearly disagree,” he said, referring to a
full-page ad in Friday’s New York Times calling on Bush to leave office. Among
those listed as supporting the demand were the Rev. Al Sharpton, who sought the
Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles)
and Rep. Major R. Owens (D-N.Y.)
*
Times staff writers Peter Wallsten and Greg Miller contributed to this report.