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Leahy Presses Gonzales On Delayed
‘Clarifications’
To His Testimony On Domestic Spying
. . . AG’s Unusual Letter
Altering Testimony Raises Questions
About Administration’s Legal Justification For Program,
And About Possibility Of Similar Secret Surveillance Initiatives
WASHINGTON
(Wednesday, March 1) Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., sent the
following letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Wednesday
seeking more information on Gonzales’s testimony relating to the
legal justifications for the Administration’s domestic spying
program, as well as whether any other secret, warrantless
surveillance programs exist.
Leahy, the
ranking Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, was prompted
to send the letter after Gonzales wrote to Chairman Arlen Specter
(R-Pa.) Tuesday modifying his live testimony given at the
Committee’s February 6 hearing on the program.
In his Tuesday
letter to Specter, Gonzales wrote that the Administration’s legal
analysis for the program “evolved over time.” Gonzales’s letter
also included a strained explanation that his testimony was confined
to only the program that President had previously described, raising
the question of whether there are other secret surveillance
programs, Leahy said.
Leahy’s letter
is below. A PDF
is also available.
# # # # #
March 1, 2006
The Honorable Alberto Gonzales
Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
Dear Attorney General Gonzales:
I write in response to your unusual letter
seeking to modify your February 6 testimony that you sent to
Chairman Specter yesterday. More than three weeks after the hearing
you send the Committee a six-page letter seeking to alter your live
testimony. Your letter, in fact, does little to clarify your
testimony. Instead, it raises many questions, both factual and also
some going to the credibility of your testimony.
At the outset of my questioning I asked when
the Bush-Cheney Administration came to the conclusion that the
congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force
against al Qaeda also authorized warrantless wiretapping of
Americans inside the United States. You never directly answered my
question. Now, in your February 28 letter to Chairman Specter, you
admit that “the Department’s legal analysis has evolved over time.”
While not yet a direct answer to my question, you have at least
indicated that you did not rely on that legal rationalization when
the spying program began in 2001. I still wish to know when you
concluded that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force
authorized the warrantless wiretapping of Americans inside the
United States and renew our request for the documents that embody
that conclusion.
Of course, you realize the significance of the
timing: It will demonstrate that your reliance on an “evolving
interpretation” of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force
shows it to be after-the-fact legal rationalization rather than the
contemporaneous intent underlying the congressional resolution. You
will still need to correct or better explain your statements on
pages 184 and 187 of the transcript, which you recognize “may give
[a] misimpression.”
Second are the disturbing suggestions in your
February 28 letter that there are other secret programs impinging on
the liberties and rights of Americans. Much of your letter is
devoted to not providing answers to the questions of a number of us
regarding legal justifications for activities beyond those narrowly
conceded by you to have already been confirmed by the President. We
need to know what other activities affecting Americans’ rights you
view as justified by the Authorization for the Use of Military
Force. Please provide answers to the following questions:
Do other programs of warrantless electronic
surveillance exist? Do other programs of warrantless physical
searches or mail searches exist? Which agencies run these programs
and how long have they been in operation? What legal standards
apply to these other programs?
Also, please clarify your clarification of the
repeated assertions you made on February 6 that the Department of
Justice had not done the legal analysis as to whether it could
intercept purely domestic communications of persons associated with
al Qaeda. Has the Department done such an analysis since September
11, 2001? If so, what did the Department conclude?
Your continued refusal to answer these
questions is a source of great concern. Likewise, the indication in
your letter that your Department has conducted additional legal
rationalizations and “analysis beyond the January 19th
paper” make your production of the legal opinions to the Senate
Judiciary Committee all the more important.
At the February 6 hearing you were confronted
with your January 2001 testimony from your confirmation hearing,
which appeared to many Senators to have been misleading. I expect
that your letter yesterday was an attempt to provide some defense to
a charge that you misled the Committee, again, in your testimony on
February 6. You seek to add qualifiers and to hedge already vague
answers about the shifting legal analysis for the President’s
domestic spying program without judicial approval and about the
scope of activities undertaken secretly based on your expansive
interpretation of inherent powers of the unitary executive not based
on statutory authorities.
It is no secret that the Department of Justice
has exhibited a disturbingly arrogant pattern of unresponsiveness to
questions that I and other Democratic Senators have posed on many
issues in the past. Congress has a constitutional duty to conduct
oversight of this Administration in order to ensure its
accountability to all Americans. Indeed, the Democratic members of
the Committee are still waiting for answers to questions we posed
following your February 6th hearing that were due
yesterday. I look forward to your prompt reply to this inquiry, as
well as your overdue answers to the Committee.
Sincerely,
PATRICK LEAHY
Ranking Democratic Member |
