Senate Intelligence Chairman: Bush Can Spy By PETE YOST, Associated
Press Writer
33 minutes ago



Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said Friday the
Bush administration's domestic spying is within the president's
inherent power under the Constitution, and he rejected criticism that
Congress was kept in the dark about it.

The program is "legal, necessary and reasonable," the Kansas
Republican wrote in a 19-page letter, taking a particularly expansive
view of the president's authority for the warrantless surveillance.

"Congress, by statute, cannot extinguish a core constitutional
authority of the president," Roberts wrote.

Presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush have intercepted
communications to ascertain enemy threats to national security,
Roberts told the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate
Judiciary Committee. Roberts' letter came just three days before that
panel was to question Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the
surveillance.

All eight Judiciary Committee Democrats urged Chairman Arlen Specter,
R-Pa., to call more top Bush administration in for questioning,
including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and ex-Deputy
Attorney General Jim Comey. Comey reportedly objected to parts of the
program.

Roberts said the Bush administration's notification of just eight
members of Congress fulfilled the legal requirement that the
legislative branch be kept fully and currently informed.

Roberts has received a dozen briefings on the program; the
committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia,
half that many.

Rockefeller says he has not received enough detailed information
about the surveillance to make a judgment about its legality, and
that the full committee should be briefed.

A closed-door hearing is scheduled for Feb. 9, with testimony from
Gonzales and Gen. Michael Hayden, the principal deputy director of
national intelligence and a former National Security Agency director.

Committee Democrats are pushing for a vote on whether to authorize an
investigation. A Feb. 16 business meeting of the committee is
scheduled.

With Congress preparing to plunge into a hearing focused exclusively
on the warrantless wiretapping, Vice President Dick Cheney said
exposing the effort has done "enormous damage to our national
security." The New York Times revealed the program's existence in
December.

"It, obviously, reveals techniques and sources and methods that are
important to try to protect," Cheney said. "It gives information to
our enemies about how we go about collecting intelligence against
them. It also raises questions in the minds of other intelligence
services about whether or not they can work with the United States
intelligence service, with our CIA, for example, if we can't keep a
secret."

Cheney said he agreed with CIA Director Porter Goss, who told a
Senate hearing on Thursday that such leaks are undercutting U.S.
intelligence efforts. "I thought Director Goss was rather restrained
in his comments, but he was absolutely correct," said Cheney.

Cheney's remarks came in a radio interview with conservative talk
show host Laura Ingraham.