Specter, Cheney & the NSA

SPECTER, CHENEY & THE NSA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Carl Hulse & Jim Rutenberg]
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) has released to the media a letter he sent to Vice President Dick Cheney concerning a potential hearing on the National Security Agency domestic spying program. Sen Specter said the vice president had cut him out of discussions with all the other Republicans on his own committee about oversight of the administration's eavesdropping programs, a subject on which Sen Specter has often been at odds with the White House. The trigger for Sen Specter's anger was a deal made by VP Cheney with the other Republicans on the committee to block testimony from phone companies that reportedly cooperated in providing call records to the NSA. Sen Specter, who had been considering issuing subpoenas to compel telephone company executives to testify, learned of VP Cheney's actions only when he went into a closed meeting of the committee's Republicans on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after encountering the vice president at a weekly luncheon of all Senate Republicans. In his letter, Sen Specter told VP Cheney that events were unfolding in a "context where the administration is continuing warrantless wiretaps in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and is preventing the Senate Judiciary Committee from carrying out its constitutional responsibility for Congressional oversight." VP Cheney, by contrast, has led the White House's effort to defend the surveillance programs on legal and national security grounds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/washington/08specter.html
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* Specter: Cheney put pressure on panel
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060608/a_capcol08.art.htm

* Specter Says Cheney Tried to Derail Hearings
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-cheney8jun08,1,5...

* Regulate the spooks
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff]
[Commentary] Congress should back Sen Feinstein's plan to bring NSA wiretapping under an expanded FISA.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-nsa08jun08,1,5268...
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