Senators challenge FBI chief over domestic spying program

WASHINGTON -- Senators frustrated by scant details on the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program yesterday rapped FBI Director Robert Mueller for refusing to show how it has curbed terrorist activity in the United States.

Mueller said he was unable to talk about the warrantless spying program because it is classified.

"What assurances can you provide that the program is worthwhile?" asked Senate Judiciary chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican. "Have arrests been made? Have terror cells been broken?"

The FBI has briefed congressional intelligence panels on the controversial program, but Mueller said he did not have permission to share that information with other lawmakers -- including the judiciary panels that oversee the bureau. "I am prepared to brief whichever committee, to the extent that I am allowed to," he said.

Mueller ticked off a list of FBI cases targeting terrorism suspects since the 2001 attacks. They included the so-called Lackawanna Six, who allegedly attended Al Qaeda training camps; an Ohio truck driver who plotted to attack the Brooklyn Bridge; and four men charged with planning to hit synagogues and US and Israeli facilities in the Los Angeles area.

But Mueller did not say whether the cases resulted from the secret spying program, which was revealed last year. His answer annoyed senators, who said their constitutionally protected oversight was being hampered by the administration's stonewalling.

"When done poorly or without proper safeguards and oversight, data banks do not make us safer; they just further erode Americans' privacy and civil liberties," said Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the panel's incoming chairman. He said the administration "has gone to unprecedented lengths to hide its own activities from the public, while at the same time collecting and compiling unprecedented amounts of information about every citizen."

Later, Mueller said the FBI could better fight terrorists if authorities had stronger subpoena power to determine whether threats are valid, and if search and surveillance tools granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court could be expanded.

His appearance marked a long-delayed hearing for senators eager to hear about the FBI's progress on terror investigations, including a five-year probe of the deadly anthrax attacks. Mueller declined to comment on specifics of the case. He was also scolded by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, for ranking violent-crime prevention as a lower priority than public corruption and organized crime cases.

"Gangs are killing more people in this country than organized crime ever did," Feinstein said. "And that's just a fact."

Mueller called public corruption cases the FBI's top criminal investigative priority, noting more than 1,000 government employees have been convicted over the past two years with the FBI's help.