US insists spying was legal

2005-12-18 22:04

Washington - The US administration insisted on Sunday that President George W Bush had acted legally in secretly approving the interception of telephone calls and emails within the United States after the September 11 attacks.

But even senior Republicans have joined outraged opposition Democrats in questioning the tactic.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it had been a "serious matter" that the wire taps had been revealed by the New York Times on Friday.

Bush acknowledged his action on Saturday, but said that allowing the wiretaps without getting a court order had been a crucial tactic in his "war on terror" after New York and Washington were attacked by Al-Qaeda in 2001.

"The president has been very well informed that he has the constitutional and other authorities to do this," Rice told the Fox News Sunday programme in an interview.

"Using his constitutional authorities, using authorities granted to him," Rice went on, the president wanted to make sure "that people could not communicate inside the United States about terrorist activity with people outside the United States, leaving us vulnerable to terrorist attack.

"We simply can't be in a situation in which the president is not responding to this different kind of war on terrorism. We exist now in a world in which terrorist attacks are taken from within the United States. And that's what the president addressed.

Rice joined the president in condemning the publicising of the secret programme.

"It is really a serious matter when we get the disclosure of a programme like this because, after all, what we must do is protect from those who are trying to hurt us."

She told how US authorities had once tracked Osama bin Laden's personal telephone.

"And then a story appeared in the newspapers and he stopped using it. I don't know whether that would have prevented an attack, but you can imagine that being able to follow Osama bin Laden's communications was critical."

Bush said on Saturday that: "The unauthorised disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."

But Republican senator John McCain joined lawmakers who have questioned by the president did not use the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to get a court warrant for the hundreds, possible thousands of taps that were carried out.

McCain said he trusted the administration when it said that Bush had the authority to give the secret approval.

"The president, I think, has the right to do this, and yet, I don't know why he didn't go through the FISA. In other words, there is a court procedure, and I think we have to have - find out answers as to why he didn't go through the court procedure," McCain said on ABC television.

Democrats have demanded an inquiry into the wire taps.

- SAPA