Gonzales Testifies on Eavesdropping Changes
By DAVID STOUT
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 -- Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales was lectured on Capitol Hill today by senators who were only partly mollified by the Bush administration’s concession to allow judicial oversight of its electronic-eavesdropping program.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who has just become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Mr. Gonzales he welcomed the administration’s decision, announced on Wednesday, to seek approval for eavesdropping from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, “as many of us, many of us, have been saying should have been done years ago.”
The administration’s decision, Mr. Leahy said, is a tiny bit of good news in an otherwise gloomy period. “In the 32 years since I first came to the Senate -- and that was during the era of Watergate and Vietnam -- I’ve never seen a time when their Constitution and fundamental rights as Americans were more threatened, unfortunately, by our own government,” he told the attorney general.
Nor did Mr. Gonzales get any breaks from Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who has just stepped down as the panel chairman. Mr. Specter, too, said he was pleased that the eavesdropping program will now be under review by the intelligence surveillance court.
“And it is a little hard to see why it took so long,” said Mr. Specter, like Mr. Leahy a former prosecutor and, also like Mr. Leahy, a jealous guardian of the prerogatives of Congress.
(The rest is here.)
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 -- Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales was lectured on Capitol Hill today by senators who were only partly mollified by the Bush administration’s concession to allow judicial oversight of its electronic-eavesdropping program.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who has just become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Mr. Gonzales he welcomed the administration’s decision, announced on Wednesday, to seek approval for eavesdropping from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, “as many of us, many of us, have been saying should have been done years ago.”
The administration’s decision, Mr. Leahy said, is a tiny bit of good news in an otherwise gloomy period. “In the 32 years since I first came to the Senate -- and that was during the era of Watergate and Vietnam -- I’ve never seen a time when their Constitution and fundamental rights as Americans were more threatened, unfortunately, by our own government,” he told the attorney general.
Nor did Mr. Gonzales get any breaks from Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who has just stepped down as the panel chairman. Mr. Specter, too, said he was pleased that the eavesdropping program will now be under review by the intelligence surveillance court.
“And it is a little hard to see why it took so long,” said Mr. Specter, like Mr. Leahy a former prosecutor and, also like Mr. Leahy, a jealous guardian of the prerogatives of Congress.
(The rest is here.)
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