Cheney Says Eavesdropping `Critical' to Security

Bloomberg
Jan. 05, 2006

Vice President Dick Cheney will say in a speech today that eavesdropping inside the U.S. without court approval has helped prevent terrorist attacks in the last four years and suggest that a similar program might have prevented the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon.

``This program is critical to the national security of the United States,'' Cheney will tell the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, according to speech excerpts released at the White House. ``America has been protected not by luck, but by sensible policy decisions.''

Cheney's speech excerpts offer no specific examples of attacks that have been averted since Sept. 11 because of Bush administration polices, saying only that the U.S. has been protected by ``decisive actions at home and abroad'' and by ``round-the-clock efforts on the part of the people in law enforcement, intelligence, the military and homeland security.'' His spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, declined to provide more details ahead of Cheney's full speech at 2:35 p.m. today.

Cheney's remarks step up the Bush administration's defense of its decision to bypass court approval and allow the National Security Agency to monitor telephone calls and e-mails between the U.S. and suspected terrorist contacts overseas.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, has said he plans to hold hearings on the eavesdropping effort. Senator Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, endorses such hearings, saying the government needs to examine how it will fight a lengthy war against terrorism.

Attack on Pentagon

The vice president will say in his speech that the al-Qaeda terrorist network, while weakened and fractured, is planning future attacks. ``Either we are serious about fighting this war, or we are not,'' Cheney will say.

``If we'd been able to do this before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon,'' Cheney will say. ``We didn't know they were here plotting until it was too late.''

Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, told reporters in a conference call that he was skeptical of Cheney's assertion that tapping phones without court approval could have stopped an attack on Sept. 11.

``That's the kind of argument people like to make sometimes when they're trying to cover their tracks,'' he said. Feingold said that although Bush didn't have the authority to order the wiretaps, hearings should be held before a decision on what actions, if any, should be taken against the president.

``We ought to have a dignified process,'' he said.

Patriot Act

Democrats including Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota have said they weren't briefed on all aspects of the wiretapping program and weren't given a chance to approve or disapprove of the secret surveillance.

The controversy helped derail full re-authorization of the USA Patriot Act, a law giving government agencies broader authority to investigate suspected terrorists.

In his speech, Cheney will say the U.S. ``cannot afford'' to be without the Patriot Act's protections, and warned against ``yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country.''

``Obviously no one can guarantee that we won't be hit again, but neither should anyone say that the relative safety of the last four years came as an accident,'' Cheney's text says. ``America has been protected not by luck but by sensible policy decisions.''

He'll also say that progress is being made in Iraq, echoing remarks President George W. Bush made earlier today at the Pentagon. Bush said the U.S. will reduce the number of its troops in Iraq by ``several thousand'' because Iraqis are taking on more responsibility for security. The U.S. over the next year will cut its forces in Iraq below levels that had been in the country before the Iraqi elections, he said.