Surveilling Gonzales

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The attorney general defended warrantless spying with yet more doublespeak, but the Senate is homing in on Bush's dangerous abuse of power.

By Walter Shapiro

Feb. 7, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began his prepared remarks to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday by invoking "al-Qaida and its affiliates" and ended with the phrase "war on terror." His heavy-handed word choice reflected the decision of the White House to turn the first congressional hearing on the NSA eavesdropping scandal into a referendum on whether Americans want to grant Osama bin Laden the same freedom-to-phone rights as your typical patriotic telemarketer. But surprisingly, this once powerful terror talk did not quiet congressional qualms about the Bush administration's determination to rewrite the Constitution without a license.

Part of the difference was that committee Democrats, chastened by their garrulous ineptitude during the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings, remembered to question the witness. Gonzales also lacked the glib charm of John Roberts and the safe "I've spent my life in the law library" cipher quality of Alito. But what mattered during the all-day hearing was that, from time to time, committee Republicans -- particularly chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and South Carolina's Lindsay Graham -- bore in mind that they, too, were upholding the powers of the Congress rather than unquestioningly defending the Bush White House.

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But Leahy's best gotcha moment came when he got the attorney general to explain exactly when the administration decided that going to Congress at all was not worth the trouble. At a mid-December 2005 press conference -- just after the New York Times revealed the existence of the NSA snooping program -- Gonzales pointed to the political problems of working with Congress as a major reason why the government had to resort to warrantless wiretapping. But at Monday's hearing, Gonzales reversed field and admitted that these discussions about legislative difficulties occurred in 2004 -- nearly three years after the NSA decided that it didn't need no stinkin' warrants to listen to an American citizen's phone calls.

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/02/07/spying/