Battle Lines Drawn Over NSA Program

Administration Promises Surveillance Is Legal, Congressional Leaders Demand Oversight

(CBS/AP)  The debate over the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance activities heated up on Sunday as senior administration officials insisted the program is within the law and congressional leaders continued to question the president's authority.

Reports also surfaced that Vice President Dick Cheney pushed for even more warrentless eavesdropping by the NSA at the program's inception.

"The president has been very clear that we are to pursue our intelligence programs within the law," White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said on CBS' Face The Nation, re-enforcing President Bush's promise that the government is not "trolling through the personal lives" of Americans.

"As you know, domestic to domestic require a court order. He has directed that that, of course, will be complied with," Hadley said.

But, that assurance was not good enough for Republican Arlen Specter, the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee, who insisted that Congress have more oversight on the program. Later on Face The Nation, Specter said, "There really has to be, in our system of government, checks and balances, separation of powers, and congressional oversight. There has been no meaningful congressional oversight on these programs."

Congresswoman Jane Harman, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, went even further. She told Bob Schieffer, "I think the administration is breaking the law. Its legal rationale that it offers I think is extremely shaky. To this White House, the Constitution starts with Article II, which is the power of the executive. They skip over Article I totally; that's the legislature. And Article III is the courts."

"But of course the Congress does know," Hadley said. "The House Intelligence – these are intelligence programs – they have been briefed to appropriate members of the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee. These were the committees established by the Congress to deal with these matters."

Congressional leaders will have another chance to examine the NSA's activities soon, as the agency's former top official – General Michael V. Hayden – seeks to be confirmed as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. (Read what Congressional leaders had to say on Sunday about General Hayden's prospects here.)

Hayden was the chief architect of the NSA's domestic surveillance program and one of its chief defenders when the New York Times originally disclosed the Bush administration's warantless eavesdropping activities in December.

But, a report in this Sunday's edition of the Times, revealed that Vice President Cheney played a far greater role in developing the spying program. Two senior intelligence officials told the Times that shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney pressed the NSA to intercept domestic phone calls and e-mails without warrants.

The officials, speaking to the paper on the condition of anonymity, said that the NSA's lawyers and Hayden stopped the plan from going through, but did not know what compromises had been made in the final program.

The vice president and his legal advisor David S. Addington "believed that the Constitution permitted spy agencies to take sweeping measures to defend the country," according to the Times.

President Bush defended the government's domestic surveillance programs himself on Saturday in his weekly radio address.

"The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities," Mr. Bush said in his weekly radio address Saturday. "The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans."

Mr. Bush's radio broadcast echoed a similar statement in an impromptu appearance on Thursday.