Doubts voiced on domestic spying
WASHINGTON - A former top lawyer for the Bush administration said yesterday that parts of President Bush's much-criticized eavesdropping program were partially illegal.
There were aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program "that I could not find the legal support for," Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But he would not say exactly what law or constitutional principle the surveillance violated. Goldsmith said the White House has forbidden him from saying anything about the legal analysis underpinning the program - key details long sought by some congressional critics.
As the Justice Department's top legal adviser to the White House from 2003 to 2004, Goldsmith was in charge of writing formal legal opinions and interpretations for the executive branch.
The legal rationale for the program is so secretive it initially was not even shared with the general counsel of the National Security Agency, which conducted the surveillance.
The deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey, also was not advised about the Terrorist Surveillance Program, despite his role in implementing the warrantless surveillance. As deputy, Comey would have been responsible for approving warrantless surveillance requests when the attorney general was not available.
Goldsmith said he assumes that the White House does not want the legality of the surveillance program scrutinized, and he said "the extreme secrecy . . . led to a lot of mistakes."
The legal justification for the eavesdropping program has been a central point of a standoff between the White House and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy. The Vermont Democrat has said he wants certain information about the administration's surveillance methods before he will schedule confirmation hearings for Michael Mukasey, Bush's choice for attorney general.
In his testimony, Goldsmith contradicted former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, who told the committee earlier this year there was no dissent in the administration about the program.
