GOP's Hagel Urges Bush to Explain Spy Program

The Associated Press | January 30 2006

A Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday that President Bush has more explaining to do on his domestic spy program and cast doubt on the administration's assertion of broad executive power.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said he is looking forward to congressional hearings on the legal justification for the secretive National Security Agency program. He remains unconvinced that Bush could allow the program without fully consulting with the courts or Congress.

The Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings beginning Feb. 6; the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold similar closed-door sessions on the matter.

"If in fact the president does believe that our current laws are restricting him because of new technologies ... then he should come together with Congress and say we need to amend it," Hagel said on ABC's "This Week."

Bush has defended his decision to bypass a 1978 law that requires government lawyers to go to a secretive court for warrants to conduct domestic surveillance, saying the law is too cumbersome to deal with in a post-9/11 world of heightened security threats.
On Sunday, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett said Bush has ample constitutional authority as commander in chief and under a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing force in the war against terror. Additional briefings and debate with Congress could risk security by tipping off the enemy, he said.

"There's no way that we can confidently say that by having a debate about changing the law would not unearth new operational details that would only tell the enemy exactly how we're surveilling them," Bartlett said on CNN's "Late Edition." "That's something that is just unacceptable."

Hagel and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said they remain open to hearing testimony from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other administration officials but were uncertain that a president could have broad "blank check" authority.

They said both Republicans and Democrats were equally committed to fighting terrorism, and they rejected as unhelpful efforts by White House aide Karl Rove to make national security the top partisan issue in the November midterm elections.

"I think that I can make certain that we have the tools that are necessary to monitor calls from al-Qaida to U.S. citizens without going overboard and creating a situation in which, randomly, we are rifling through the e-mails and cell calls of ordinary American citizens," said Obama, who appeared on ABC.
Added Hagel: "National security is more important than the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. And to use it to try and get someone elected will ultimately end up in defeat and disaster for that political party."

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