NEWSWEEK: Senate Intelligence Committee Likely to Open Investigation Into NSA Wiretapping; Key Republicans Expected to Join Call for More Info From Wh14 February 2006
Last week was particularly rough for President Bush's team on Capitol Hill as former FEMA director Michael Brown used a congressional hearing to lay the blame for the botched handling of Hurricane Katrina on the White House and the Homeland Security Department. This coming week is not going to be any better, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff, Investigative Correspondent Mark Hosenball and Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas. The Senate intelligence committee is likely to vote to open an investigation into the NSA's wiretapping program, according to senior congressional aides. The chairman of the committee, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, will probably follow the White House line and try to keep a lid on the hearings. But three Republicans -- Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Mike DeWine of Ohio -- are expected to join with the Democrats on the committee to vote to demand more information about the secret eavesdropping program from the White House and intelligence agencies, Newsweek reports in the February 20 issue (on newsstands Monday, February 13).
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060212/NYSU010 )
At the same time, there are hints that federal law enforcement has pushed the edge of the legal envelope. In recent court papers, Iyman Faris, a former Columbus, Ohio truckdriver who pleaded guilty to a plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch, argued that he had been held without a warrant. Seeking to overturn his guilty plea, Faris has claimed that the FBI agents who took him into custody in March 2003 told him he didn't need a lawyer because he had "joined the U.S. team." After questioning him for several days at a Columbus-area hotel, Faris says, the FBI took him to its training academy at Quantico, Va., where he was held in a locked dormitory room and interrogated for eight hours a day. According to Faris's account, this treatment continued for a couple of weeks, during which he was never formally arrested or given a "Miranda" warning.
While discussing the possibility of Senate intelligence committee hearings on the secret wiretapping program, a senior White House official shrugged off the push-back from Republican lawmakers. "The idea that there is growing concern in our party is unfounded," he said. This aide, who knows the thinking of the president and his top advisers, attributed individual motivations to the GOP dissidents. He said that some lawmakers, like Senator DeWine, are in close races back home and need political cover, while others, like Senator Hagel, are well-known mavericks who often criticize the White House.
Last week, the White House agreed to brief the full House and Senate intelligence committees on the NSA programs, but congressional leaders who had been briefed on the program all along have complained that they were largely kept in the dark about the real workings of the program. And while Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that a "bipartisan group of leaders" was consulted in 2004 about whether a new law was needed, Rep. Peter Hoekstra said the issue never came up when he was briefed by Vice President Cheney after he became GOP chair of the House Intelligence Committee in August 2004. Three Democratic leaders briefed on the program that year -- Rep. Jane Harman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, and former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle -- recalled no discussion of a new law. "I'm confident it never occurred," said Daschle.
(Complete article can be read at http://www.Newsweek.com.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11300384/site/newsweek/
Source: prnewswire
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