Word: nsa
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...opening first-class mail or listening to calls beginning and ending inside the U.S. without notifying a court could be justified under the same argument. Gonzales wouldn't answer, saying he couldn't talk about operational details. Senators repeatedly pressed him on who was keeping the National Security Agency (NSA) program in check. How could Americans be assured that the government was only listening to the phone calls of known terrorists...
...NSA performs its own oversight, said Gonzales. The program, he argued, is run by professional intelligence officers, and the NSA Inspector General reviews the program to be sure the agency is not listening in on the conversations of unsuspecting citizens. Also, he added, the program itself, which monitors only phone calls where one end originates outside the U.S., is renewed every 45 days on the condition, said Gonzales, that "al Qaeda continues to pose a threat...
...NSA wiretaps were performed without obtaining the warrants beforehand required by the law that governs eavesdropping on foreign agents, in part, because the process is "cumbersome and burdensome," said Gonzales. Convinced that it wasn't necessary, the Bush Administration did not ask Congress to streamline the procedures to perform these wiretaps. Senators cited five recent examples when changes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) were passed at the request of the White House. When asked, Gonzales argued, it wasn't necessary because the President's constitutionally granted powers, as well as the specific wartime authority granted after 9/11, allow...
...NSA program was never kept entirely under wraps. Congressional leaders had been made aware of the program soon after it began and the Justice Department reviewed the program internally...
...Feingold had asked Gonzales if the president, as commander in chief, could “authorize warrantless searches of Americans’ homes and wiretaps of their conversations in violation of the criminal and foreign intelligence surveillance statutes of this country.” Gonzales, who knew of the NSA program’s existence as White House counsel, denied that the administration was engaging in any illegal wiretapping and that they were discussing a “hypothetical situation...