Department of Justice officials: NSA broke the law Agence France-Presse

Published: Thursday April 16, 2009





Print This Email This A key US spy agency overstepped legal limits in intercepting private e-mail messages and phone calls, Justice Department officials said Thursday, as top lawmakers in Congress said they would launch an investigation.



The National Security Agency (NSA), an important intelligence-gathering arm of America's vast espionage network, undertook the eavesdropping of US citizens' electronic communications in a bid to thwart global terrorism.



But the agency exceeded the authority laid out by Congress, US officials said, adding the problems, which have since been corrected, were detected during "routine oversight" of the domestic eavesdropping program.



Senator Dianne Feinstein, who heads up the US Senate Intelligence Committee, said the charges were "serious" and warranted congressional investigation.



"These are serious allegations and we will make sure we get the facts," the Democratic lawmaker said, vowing to hold hearings "within one month."



And the top lawmaker in the US House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said the revelations were "disturbing" and would be reviewed by the the appropriate committees in her chamber as well.



"Those who directed these activities in the (George W.) Bush administration must be held accountable," she said.



Federal justice authorities however, said the problem already had been rectified.



"The Department of Justice ... took comprehensive steps to correct the situation and bring the program into compliance," the Justice Department said in a statement.



It added the eavesdropping program had been temporarily suspended until the fixes were in place.



"The Justice Department takes its national security oversight responsibilities seriously, and works diligently to ensure that surveillance under established legal authorities complies with the nation's laws, regulations and policies, including those designed to protect privacy interests and civil liberties," the agency statement said.



Separately, the NSA said in a statement Thursday that its intelligence operations, "including programs for collection and analysis, are in strict accordance with US laws and regulations" as well as "all provisions" of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs espionage activities.



Due to the classified nature of the NSA's work, details about the precise nature of the violation were not provided.



News reports citing official sources said the NSA overreach had been "inadvertent" and stemmed from ambiguities in new legislation regulating the US government's wiretapping powers.



The New York Times wrote the legislation appeared to have created challenges in collecting intelligence on terrorism and spying suspects, particularly when trying to determine if the subject of a wiretap was overseas, and if the individual was in the United States.



The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which oversees the US intelligence community, said in a statement published by the New York Times that "when inadvertent mistakes are made, we take it very seriously and work immediately to correct them."



The controversy is only the latest of many involving the warrantless wiretap program.



After the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, former US president George W. Bush authorized the NSA to monitor international phone calls, e-mails and other electronic communications without court authorization when at least one party was suspected of supporting or engaging in terrorist activities.



The former US administration had asserted that it had the power to authorize domestic eavesdropping without court oversight.



But revelations in 2005 about the agency's domestic espionage efforts sparked an outcry from civil liberties groups, as well as from some US lawmakers.



Congress last year approved legislation stating that the targets of the eavesdropping had to be "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States and stating that the NSA needed court approval to monitor the purely domestic communications of Americans who under suspicion.



But other violations have also come to light, the Times reported, including the agency's efforts to wiretap a member of the US Congress without court approval, while on an overseas trip.



The US civil liberties community called on Congress to clamp down on NSA activities.



"It's time to ... restore the checks and balances of our surveillance system. Warrantless surveillance has no place in an America we can be proud of," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union.





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