Feb 6, 2006, 16:48 GMT
Washington - US President George W. Bush's top justice official insisted Monday that the government's warrantless surveillance of suspected terrorists was legal, setting off a barrage of tough questions as a Senate investigation got under way.
Senators from Bush's Republicans and the opposition Democrats both cast doubts on the legal rationale for the programme revealed in a newspaper report last last year.
'Instead of doing what the president has the authority to do legally, he decided to do it illegally without safeguards,' Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said as the panel opened hearings into the affair.
At issue is whether Bush had the power to authorize a programme that intercepts phone calls and e-mails from suspected terrorists, even if one party to the conversation is in the United States.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in his opening statement, reiterated Bush's case for why the eavesdropping does not require court approval.
He cited Bush's constitutional powers as president and the broad leeway to fight terrorism that Congress gave Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
'The terrorist surveillance programme is necessary, it is lawful and it respects the civil liberties we all cherish,' Gonzales said.
But even judiciary committee chairman Arlen Specter, a Republican, said he was 'skeptical' of the administration's reasoning.
The president and the Justice Department 'do not have unchecked powers to decide what laws to follow. And they certainly don't have the power to decide what laws to ignore,' Specter said.
The hearing turned contentious early on after Specter said he did not see the need to have Gonzales testify under oath, a ruling to which Democrats strongly objected.
'Our enemy is listening,' Gonzales told the hearing. 'And I cannot help but wonder if they aren't shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive programme by leaking its existence in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror.'
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