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Judiciary Chair Sends Questions to AG On Domestic Spying

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In advance of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing on Wartime Executive Power and the NSA’s Surveillance Authority, February 6, 2006, the Committee’s Republican Chairman, Arlen Specter, sent a letter on January 24, 2006, to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, listing 15 questions for which he expected detailed responses. The following questions are in the letter:

  • “Why did the Executive not ask for the authority to conduct electronic surveillance when Congress passed the Patriot Act and was predisposed, to the maximum extent likely, to grant the Executive additional powers which the Executive thought necessary?”
  • “How can the Executive justify disclosure to only the so-called ‘Gang of Eight’ instead of the full intelligence committees” when Title V of the National Security Act of 1947 provides otherwise?
  • “Why didn’t the President seek a warrant from the [FISA] Court authorizing electronic authorizing in advance the electronic surveillance”?
  • “Why did the Executive Branch not seek after-the-fact authorization from the FISA Court within the 72 hours as provided by the Act?”

    • Related references:

  • AP, Analysis: White House Tries to Spin Spying
  • AP: Gonzales Says Surveillance Entirely Legal
  • Prepared Remarks for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales
    at the Georgetown University Law Center, January 24, 2006
  • Postings on domestic surveillance

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