Nixon Aide Urges Censure Of Bush

Watergate Figure John Dean Says Bush's Wrongs Worse Than Nixon's

(CBS/AP)  Nixon White House counselor John Dean asserted Friday that President Bush's domestic spying exceeds the wrongdoing that toppled his former boss from power, and a veteran Republican snapped that Democrats were trying to "score political points" with a motion to censure Mr. Bush.

"Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented," Dean told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it."

Testifying to a Senate committee on Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold's resolution to censure Mr. Bush, Dean said the president "needs to be told he cannot simply ignore a law with no consequences."

Republicans, who scheduled the hearing, dismissed Feingold's resolution as an election year stunt.

At issue is whether Mr. Bush's secretive domestic spying program violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Mr. Bush has said the National Security Agency's secretive wiretapping program is aimed at finding terrorists before they strike on American soil by tapping the phones of people making calls overseas. He has launched a criminal investigation to find out who leaked the program's existence to the New York Times, saying it compromised national security.

Feingold's measure would condemn Mr. Bush's "unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining the court orders required" by the FISA act.

"To me, this is not really and should not be a partisan question," Dean told the panel. "I think it's a question of institutional pride of this body, of the Congress of the United States."

He added in prepared testimony that if Congress doesn't have the stomach for Feingold's resolution as drafted, it should pass some measure serving Mr. Bush a warning.

"The resolution should be amended, not defeated, because the president needs to be reminded that separation of powers does not mean an isolation of powers," Dean said in prepared remarks.

Feingold hasn't gotten much support from fellow Democrats; most ran for cover the day he announced the motion, CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss reports. But what this hearing is about — and maybe the censure motion, too — is spurring more investigation and more congressional attention to a program that the administration not only defends but still won't let Congress get a detailed look at.

Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Feingold's resolution has no merit, "but it provides a forum for the discussion of issues which really ought to be considered in greater depth than they have been," he said at the session's open.