NSA Bush defends spying in U.S.

The president said he's protecting Americans by monitoring international phone calls.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Facing angry criticism and challenges to his authority in Congress, President Bush unapologetically defended Saturday his administration's right to conduct secret post-Sept. 11 spying in the United States as "critical to saving American lives."
Bush said congressional leaders had been briefed on the operation more than a dozen times. That included Democrats as well as Republicans in the House and Senate, a GOP lawmaker said.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she had been told on several occasions that Bush had authorized unspecified activities by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest spy agency. She said she had expressed strong concerns at the time, and that Bush's statement Saturday "raises serious questions as to what the activities were and whether the activities were lawful."
Often appearing angry in an eight-minute address, the president made clear he has no intention of halting his authorizations of the monitoring activities and said public disclosure of the program by the news media had endangered Americans.
Super-secret agency
Bush's willingness to publicly acknowledge a highly classified spying program was a stunning development for a president known to dislike disclosure of even the most mundane inner workings of his White House. Just a day earlier he had refused to talk about it.
Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency has eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States without court-approved warrants. Bush said steps like these would help fight terrorists like those who involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot.
"The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," Bush said. "And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad."
News of the program came at a particularly damaging and delicate time.
Already, the administration was under fire after being accused of operating secret prisons in Eastern Europe and shipping suspected terrorists to other countries for interrogations.
The NSA program's existence surfaced as Bush was fighting to save the expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the domestic anti-terrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Democrats and a few Republicans who say the law gives so much latitude to law enforcement officials that it threatens Americans' constitutional liberties succeeded Friday in stalling its renewal.
So Bush scrapped the version of his weekly radio address that he had already taped -- on the recent elections in Iraq -- and delivered a live speech from the Roosevelt Room in which he lashed out at the senators blocking the Patriot Act as irresponsible and confirmed the NSA program.