Eavesdropping

WASHINGTON -- President Bush launched an effort yesterday to preserve new spying powers for U.S. intelligence agencies that critics worry could ensnare unwitting American citizens. Bush said restrictions being considered by Congress would leave the country less prepared to combat terrorism. During a visit to the National Security Agency headquarters at Fort Meade, the president said that workers who collect and interpret communications need provisions contained in the Protect America Act, adopted last month, to do their jobs.

WASHINGTON -- Michael B. Mukasey is best known as the federal judge from New York who presided over one of the nation's first terrorism trials, the prosecution and conviction of Omar Abdel- Rahman, the "blind sheik," and his followers in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Civil libertarians often point to that case to buttress their belief that terrorism suspects, including the detainees at the U.S naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be tried in federal court. But as attorney general, Mukasey is not likely to agree.

WASHINGTON -- In the most detailed accounting to date of the origins of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, former CIA Director George J. Tenet says the effort was started at the urging of Vice President Dick Cheney. In his new book released yesterday, Tenet mounts a lengthy defense of the program, noting that he regularly tracked reviews of the intelligence leads it produced. However, he also contends that CIA interrogations of detainees were more effective than any other tool that U.S. intelligence agencies had at their disposal.

WASHINGTON -- A two-week standoff over documents in the White House domestic spying program came to an end yesterday when Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales agreed to turn over to Congress classified material about secret eavesdropping. The Bush administration last month said it would put its surveillance of potential terrorist activities under supervision of a federal court but did not disclose details of its new eavesdropping program. A key Senate panel, newly controlled by Democrats, demanded access to the records to gauge whether the administration was breaking any laws in tracking terror suspects.

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence rejected yesterday the Bush administration's contention that it had brought the National Security Agency's controversial domestic eavesdropping program into compliance with the law, saying he wants strict new rules requiring the government to obtain a separate warrant every time it places a wiretap on a U.S. resident. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat who recently took over as chairman, also questioned whether the CIA should be running a secret prison network and said agency officers should be forced to follow the same rules as U.S. soldiers when interrogating detainees.

WASHINGTON -- In an apparent shift, President Bush has agreed to submit the National Security Agency's controversial domestic eavesdropping program to a secret court for approval, eliminating the warrantless aspect of the program, federal officials announced yesterday. Critics say the move, a year after the NSA program became public, appears to be an effort to pre-empt an investigation by Congress now that Democrats are in control. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning.

WASHINGTON --The Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed a bill yesterday backed by the White House that would have a secret court review the constitutionality of the Bush administration's eavesdropping program. By a party-line vote of 10-8, the committee sent the bill to the Senate floor, where a vote could come next week. The bill embodies an agreement reached by President Bush and the committee chairman, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, under which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would review the eavesdropping program.

A federal judge in Detroit struck down the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program yesterday, calling it unconstitutional and an illegal abuse of presidential power. The ruling marked the first court rejection of the controversial monitoring program and amounted to a broad rebuke of the Bush administration's tactics in the war on terrorism. "In this case, the president has acted, undisputedly, as [federal intelligence law] forbids," U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor said in a 43-page decision that sided with the American Civil Liberties Union challenge to the government system of warrantless eavesdropping.

WASHINGTON -- Stoking the debate over the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program, the directors of two key intelligence agencies argued yesterday in favor of a measure that would give the government new eavesdropping authority. Democrats criticized the plan, brokered by the White House and Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, as a "sham proposal" and a "blank check" for the federal government to spy on Americans. The proposal would authorize a secret court to review the existing NSA program and amend a 1978 law to expand government surveillance authority.

WASHINGTON -- Bipartisan anger over the scope of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs continued to ripple through Capitol Hill yesterday, but there was little sign the concerns had derailed the confirmation chances of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to head the CIA. Republicans and Democrats said they expect Hayden to answer tough questions about the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 eavesdropping activities - and recent reports that the NSA has assembled a huge database of records on Americans' domestic phone calls - before they approve his nomination.