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Bush approved purely domestic easedropping { April 6 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/3776581.htmlhttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/3776581.html
April 6, 2006, 3:47PM
Gonzales Draws Criticism From Panel Chief
By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee pointedly criticized Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Thursday for "stonewalling" by refusing to answer questions about the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program.
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."
Gonzales did not budge, defending the eavesdropping as lawful and telling Sensenbrenner and other lawmakers on the panel that he would not discuss classified matters.
"I do not think we are thumbing our nose at the Congress or the courts," Gonzales said in response to a question from Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the committee's senior Democrat.
President Bush confirmed in December that the National Security Agency has been conducting the surveillance when calls and e-mails in which at least one party is outside the United States are thought to involve al-Qaida. Gonzales has been at the center of the administration's defense of the program in the face of criticism from Congress and civil liberties groups.
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."
In written responses to questions from Congress, the Justice Department last month would discuss disagreements among the departments' attorneys about the program or a Newsweek story about a Justice Department controversy over the program in 2004 that led to a visit from senior White House officials to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in a hospital at the time.
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