Is There More Here?

An inductive reading of Attorney General Abu Gonzales' testimony to Sen. Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee a few weeks ago led many observers to believe that there is more than one extra-legal warrantless surveillance program currently in operation.

See Feb. 7: What Other Illegalities Are They Hiding?

Gonzales is still acting suspiciously evasive on the matter.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.

In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago.

At that appearance, Gonzales confined his comments to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, saying that President Bush had authorized it "and that is all that he has authorized."

But in yesterday's letter, Gonzales, citing that quote, wrote: "I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities." Using the administration's term for the recently disclosed operation, he continued, "I was confining my remarks to the Terrorist Surveillance Program as described by the President, the legality of which was the subject" of the Feb. 6 hearing.

At least one constitutional scholar who testified before the committee yesterday said in an interview that Gonzales appeared to be hinting that the operation disclosed by the New York Times in mid-December is not the full extent of eavesdropping on U.S. residents conducted without court warrants.

"It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about," said Bruce Fein, a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations.

I have been told that there is a good chance that one of these as yet undisclosed programs has been authorized by a USSID (United States Signals Intelligence Directive), and targets government employees with certain security clearances and the journalists that they are in contact with.

That, if true, would be a political hot potato fresh from the oven.