Bush Hid More Spying Programs: Congress

IslamOnline.net & News Agencies | July 10 2006

The Bush administration, under fire after the recent leaked information about its controversial domestic spying and tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions, concealed from Congress other intelligence operations in possible violation of the law, a ranking congressman has said.

"There are lots of programs going on in the intelligence community," Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Sunday program, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"But in this case, there was at least one major, what I consider significant, activity that we had not been briefed on."

Hoekstra said he and other committee members learned about this and other undisclosed operations from whistleblowers or concerned government employees who alerted Congress to breaches of the law.

The ranking lawmaker made clear the operation in question was different from the controversial domestic spying and monitoring of international financial transactions that the administration has been defending in recent weeks.

Ever since the 9/11 attacks the Bush administration has secretly been tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions under the pretext of terror combat.

The monitoring that came to light last month involved millions of records held by the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), an international cooperative that serves as a clearing house for the transactions.

The White House, which has sought to conceal the existence of the program, criticized the disclosure, first reported by the New York Times.

"Breach of Responsibility"

The disclosure prompted Hoekstra to fire off an angry letter to President George Bush to remind him of his legal responsibility to "fully and currently" inform Congress of intelligence operations.

"If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies," he wrote.

Hoekstra said Sunday the administration had since complied with his demand, but added he was taking the situation "very, very seriously."

"I want to set the standard there that it is not optional for this president or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing," he told Fox.

This calls into question repeated assurances by Bush and his top aides that they strictly comply with disclosure requirements.

US law requires that the intelligence panels of both the Senate and the House of Representatives be informed of the government's intelligence activities.

The Bush administration is accused of acting illegally by authorizing wiretaps on American citizens in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks without requisite court warrants.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 mandates that such surveillance be authorized by a special secret court.

Bush has defended the controversial program, saying it was limited to monitoring international phone and e-mail communications linked to people with connections to Al-Qaeda.

But The New York Times revealed in December that the NSA has "directly" tapped the country’s main communications systems without court-approved warrants.

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