[Infowarrior] - Gonzales: Bush Blocked Eavesdropping Probe

[Richard Forno]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071800
601_pf.html
Gonzales: Bush Blocked Eavesdropping Probe

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 18, 2006; 2:50 PM

President Bush personally blocked an internal investigation into the role
played by Justice Department lawyers in approving a controversial
warrantless eavesdropping program on calls between the United States and
overseas, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified today.

During an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales was
questioned by the panel's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), on why
staffers in the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility
were not allowed security clearances necessary to conduct an investigation
into the eavesdropping program.

"It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had
access," Specter asked. "Why not OPR?"

"The president of the United States makes the decision," Gonzales answered.

The exchange was part of a wide-ranging and often tense hearing touching on
many of the most controversial topics related to the Justice Department,
from leak prosecutions to the Supreme Court's recent ruling invalidating the
Bush administration's commissions for detainees in military custody.

The eavesdropping program, begun in secret after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks
and revealed in press reports last December, allows the NSA to intercept
telephone calls between the United States and overseas without court
approval and has been the focus of months of political debate over its
legality.

OPR, the Justice Department's internal affairs office, announced earlier
this year that it was unable to investigate the role that department lawyers
played in the program because it was repeatedly denied the necessary
security clearances. Until today, Gonzales and other Justice officials had
declined to provide details on who made the decision to block the Justice
probe.

In a related letter to Specter, also released today, Gonzales wrote that
Bush decided that limits had to be placed on the number of officials with
access to details about the NSA effort, which the administration dubbed the
"Terrorist Surveillance Program" several weeks after its existence was
revealed.

"The president decided that protecting the secrecy and security of the
program requires that a strict limit be placed on the number of persons
granted access to information about the program for non-operational
reasons," Gonzales wrote. "Every additional security clearance that is
granted for the TSP increases the risk that national security might be
compromised."

But in a series of memos to Gonzales's deputy also released today, OPR chief
H. Marshall Jarrett noted that "a large team of attorneys and agents"
assigned to a criminal investigation of the disclosure of the NSA program
were promptly granted the same clearances. He also noted that numerous other
investigators and officials--including the members of a civil-liberties
board--had been granted access to or briefed on the program.

"In contrast, our repeated requests for access to classified information
about the NSA program have not been granted," Jarrett wrote on March 21. "As
a result, this Office, which is charged with monitoring the integrity of the
Department's attorneys and with ensuring that the highest standards of
professional ethics are maintained, has been precluded from performing its
duties."
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