WASHINGTON: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales conceded Wednesday that he used confusing language when describing national security efforts during recent Senate testimony, an attempt to set the record straight about the government's terror surveillance program and clear questions about his credibility.
Gonzales' letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which stopped short of an apology, came as congressional Democrats agreed to give the government greater authority to spy on foreign terror suspects. The permission is temporary and limits Gonzales' role in deciding how the power is to be used.
The Bush administration is pressing Congress to revamp a 1978 law to help find terror plots overseas but has faced sharp criticism of the FBI's misuse of terror investigation tools and widespread skepticism about Gonzales' honesty.
Senators last week called for a special counsel to investigate whether Gonzales lied during his testimony about a 2004 dispute between the White House and the Justice Department over the legality of an unnamed classified national security program.
Meanwhile, the White House stood its ground against Congress and refused to let two of its political aides testify in a continuing inquiry about the Justice Department's contentious firings of federal prosecutors last year.
That inquiry was the basis of what brought Gonzales back in front of the Senate Judiciary panel last week, when he repeatedly told senators that the 2004 hospital room dispute between him and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was about "other intelligence activities" and not what has since become known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
In his two-page letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee's Democratic chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Gonzales sought to clear up the confusion.
"I am deeply concerned with suggestions that my testimony was misleading and am determined to address any such impression," Gonzales wrote in the letter, a copy of which was sent to the panel's top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter.
"I recognize that the use of the term 'Terrorist Surveillance Program' and my shorthand reference to the 'program' publicly 'described by the president' may have created confusion," Gonzales wrote.
Leahy was not swayed.
"The attorney general's legalistic explanation of his misleading testimony under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week is not what one should expect from the top law enforcement officer of the United States," Leahy said in a statement after receiving Gonzales' letter. "It is time for full candor to enforce the law and promote justice, rather than word parsing."
Democrats said they would not let their disdain for Gonzales factor into decisions about updating the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that he, as attorney general, would oversee. But they said Gonzales, or any other attorney general, should not have sole authority to allow messages between foreign terror suspects overseas to be overseen without court review.
That "is simply unacceptable," said Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller, also a Democrat, who introduced a compromise proposal Wednesday.
He said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court "must continue to play an essential role in authorizing surveillance and overseeing its execution."
"They are the trusted steward of FISA, and they can and must be a part of any new streamlined approach."
At issue is a rush to update FISA before lawmakers leave Washington at the week's end for a monthlong break. The midyear hot season generally is considered a vulnerable time for attacks, as more people travel and terrorists can move around undetected more easily.
Still, leaders of the Democratic-led Congress say they agree with the White House about the need for greater ability to intercept messages from foreign terrorists abroad.
The changes to FISA would fix what the White House says is a significant gap: the missing of foreign intelligence that could protect the country against terrorist attacks. The law generally applies to spying on foreign terror suspects in the United States, but changes in technology since 1978 have resulted in overseas communications being routed through U.S. carriers.
Currently, the FISA court must approve a warrant for investigators to intercept messages that are believed but not proved to be between foreign suspects who are overseas. The Bush administration wants to change that by giving the attorney general authority to approve such intercepts without waiting for a court warrant. Rockefeller's proposal would require the court to review the process that the attorney general uses to determine the suspects are, indeed, overseas.
The White House responded with measured optimism.
"I think they understand and appreciate the importance," Bush spokesman Tony Snow said of Democratic leaders. "We will see."
The Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said he saw bipartisan willingness to finish the legislation before Congress goes into recess at the end of this week.
The change would be only temporary, however, as lawmakers continue to work on a broader update to FISA.
Late Thursday, White House counsel Fred Fielding alerted Leahy that the administration would not allow presidential political adviser Karl Rove and aide J. Scott Jennings to testify before his panel. Fielding has maintained that top presidential aides, present and past, are immune from subpoenas and has declared some documents that are being sought off-limits under executive privilege.
source : iht.com
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