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Alberto Gonzales May Testify on NSA Surveillance
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' written answers to questions about the Bush administration's eavesdropping program may require him to testify a second time before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the panel's Republican chairman said Monday. "There is a suggestion in his letter there are other classified intelligence programs that are currently under way," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told reporters. The comments from the moderate Republican come as the Bush administration is trying to quell criticism of its surveillance operations and work with the Senate on legislation that would write the program into law. In a letter to Specter last week, Gonzales clarified his testimony in a half dozen areas covered in a daylong Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Feb. 6. Gonzales said his answers were focused only on President Bush's program granting intelligence officers the power to monitor - without court approval - the international calls and e-mails of U.S. residents, when those officers suspect terrorism may be involved. "In all of my testimony at the hearing I addressed - with limited exceptions - only the legal underpinnings of the Terrorist Surveillance Program," Gonzales wrote. "I did not and could not address operational aspects of the program or any other classified intelligence activities."
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Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, said Monday that Gonzales should come back before the panel to "clear up the confusion he created first by ducking our questions, and later by further clouding the issues with a 'clarifying' letter that substantially revised his unsworn testimony." Specter's comments suggest he too has concerns about Gonzales' letter. "We may have to have him back before the Judiciary Committee," Specter said. The Justice Department has not received a formal request to testify, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said. "As a matter of practice, officials from the department do not discuss, confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of any classified intelligence programs in public settings," he added. Specter was one of the first Republicans to break with the White House to question the surveillance program when it was disclosed in December. He's drafting legislation that would require a secret federal intelligence court to conduct regular reviews of the constitutionality of the monitoring.
© 2006 Associated Press.
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