Too few answers on domestic spying: ATTORNEY GENERAL’S DEFENSES RING HOLLOW

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ defense Monday of President Bush’s order to authorize warrantless spying on Americans failed to shed much light on the deeply disturbing program.

Gonzales sparred with skeptical senators over the significant question of the program’s legality. On that point, he repeated the dubious arguments made by Bush and his defenders in recent weeks that the program was authorized by law and by the Constitution. He gave only vague explanations for why the president won’t obtain warrants from the secret court established by Congress to oversee domestic spying.

And the attorney general, claiming he could not disclose details of the program without tipping off the enemy, avoided saying anything about some of the most important questions the program raises: Whose calls are being monitored and why? How many Americans or legal visitors are being subject to the snooping, and how many of those have been found to be connected to terrorists? How long does each wiretap stay in place?

To those questions, the administration’s response boils down to this: Trust us, we’re spying on terrorists.

The answer is inadequate, particularly for an administration whose reservoir of trust with the American people is dangerously close to empty.

The administration hasn’t provided a shred of evidence that existing legal authority to monitor Americans under the oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is insufficient to prevent terrorism. And even Gonzales admitted he could not give senators absolute assurance'' that no one other than people linked to terrorists are being monitored. That's not surprising. Accounts of the spying program in the New York Times and Washington Post suggest that thousands of Americans have been subjected to electronic monitoring by the super-secret National Security Agency. That would mean that a large number of innocent bystanders have been swept into Bush's wiretapping dragnet. It would suggest that the program is not only a huge invasion of privacy and encroachment on individual liberties, but also a fishing expedition of questionable effectiveness. Without singling out those reports specifically, Gonzales said news accounts about the domestic eavesdropping program arein almost every case, in one way or another, misinformed, confused or wrong.’’

If Americans don’t know whom to believe, they should remember that the Bush administration has been caught monitoring the activities of Quakers, anti-war student activists, environmentalists, animal-rights activists and even Catholic groups — all in the name of the war on terror. The Constitution established checks and balances to prevent these kinds of abuses — and it appears that Bush authorized the warrantless-spying program precisely to bypass constitutional safeguards.

The American people deserve more answers. And if the administration fails to provide them, Congress should seek them through a full-fledged investigation into Bush’s domestic spying program.
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