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Bush: Eavesdropping helps save US lives
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-18 08:49
WASHINGTON - Facing angry criticism and challenges to his authority in
Congress, US President Bush on Saturday unapologetically defended his
administration's right to conduct secret post-September 11 spying in the United
States as "critical to saving American lives."
Bush said congressional leaders had been briefed on the operation more than a
dozen times. That included Democrats as well as Republicans in the House and
Senate, a GOP lawmaker said.
US President Bush
delivers his live radio address in the Roosevelt Room at the White House,
Saturday, Dec. 17, 2005, in Washington. [AP]
| House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she
had been told on several occasions that Bush had authorized unspecified
activities by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest spy agency. She
said she had expressed strong concerns at the time, and that Bush's statement
Saturday "raises serious questions as to what the activities were and whether
the activities were lawful."
Often appearing angry in an eight-minute address, the president made clear he
has no intention of halting his authorizations of the monitoring activities and
said public disclosure of the program by the news media had endangered
Americans.
Bush's willingness to publicly acknowledge a highly classified spying program
was a stunning development for a president known to dislike disclosure of even
the most mundane inner workings of his White House. Just a day earlier he had
refused to talk about it.
Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency has
eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of people inside the
United States without court-approved warrants. Bush said steps like these would
help fight terrorists like those who involved in the Sept. 11 plot.
"The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these
9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," Bush said. "And the
activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent
possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad."
News of the program came at a particularly damaging and delicate time.
Already, the administration was under fire for allegedly operating secret
prisons in Eastern Europe and shipping suspected terrorists to other countries
for harsh interrogations.
The NSA program's existence surfaced as Bush was fighting to save the
expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the domestic anti-terrorism law
enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Democrats and a few Republicans who
say the law gives so much latitude to law enforcement officials that it
threatens Americans' constitutional liberties succeeded Friday in stalling its
renewal.
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