AG Suggests Bush Authorized To Wiretap American-American Comms w/o Warrants

Excerpts:

[Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales also would not discount that the president could order the NSA to listen in on purely domestic calls without first obtaining a warrant from a secret court established nearly 30 years ago to consider such issues.

He said the administration, assuming the conversation related to al-Qaida, would have to determine if the surveillance were crucial to the nation's fight against terrorism, as authorized by Congress following the Sept. 11 attacks. "I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said.

The attorney general acknowledged that there had been disagreement about the monitoring inside the administration. But he took issue with published reports that detailed some of those disputes.

"They did not relate to the program the president disclosed," he said. "They related to something else and I can't get into that."


Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said Gonzales was frustrating his panel's oversight of the Justice Department and the controversial surveillance by declining to provide information about how the program is reviewed inside the administration and by whom.

"How can we discharge our oversight if, every time we ask a pointed question, we're told the program is classified?" Sensenbrenner asked Gonzales near the start of a lengthy hearing on the department's activities. "I think that ... is stonewalling."