We did not give him the authority for illegal spying on Americans, period.

[Stephanie]

JIM LEHRER: The attorney general just said this surveillance was authorized by the resolution passed by the Congress to use military force after 9/11, that the war powers that you and the members of Congress gave the president all includes this sort of thing.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Well, of course, it does not. I was there when that happened. I remember just briefly before we passed the resolution to go after Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Them coming up and saying, by the way, could we expand this to give us other powers beyond the law? We said no.

The White House never came back after that to ask for any further powers. We gave them the authority to go after Osama bin Laden. In fact, many of us, both Republicans and Democrats, were terribly disappointed when we found out that instead of catching Osama bin Laden when we had a chance to catch Osama bin Laden, our most elite forces were yanked out of Afghanistan and sent into Iraq.

JIM LEHRER: But here again what the attorney general says, that there's precedent for this, that when presidents in the past have been authorized to use military force, that means use any kind of tactics that are needed when we are at war, and that includes surveillance or anything else, no?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: We acted under the War Powers Act. We gave authority to go into Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden. I wish the president used that authority. I wish he had caught Osama bin Laden. We'd be a much safer country today had he done that. We did not give him the authority for illegal spying on Americans, period.



***

JIM LEHRER: Who has been hurt by this surveillance program?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: How do we know? We don't know who -- If as was suggested in Mr. Chertoff's statement that thousands of Americans have been spied on, do we really have thousands of al-Qaida operatives in this country and are we so incompetent in our law enforcement that there are thousands of them? We couldn't catch, oh, maybe nine or ten or twelve or thirteen.

***

What I worry about is that this and the data mining -- now we want to go and find out where you and I or anybody else went on the Internet through Google and all. What is this administration trying to do? Are they seeking enormous power to be able to spy on any of us with no reason whatsoever?

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june06/leahy_1-23.html

[Arkansas Granny]

1. Leahy made some good points last night, especially tying the

illegal NSA surveillance with the attempt to get information from Google. Also the fact that Bush had already been told no to expansion of executive powers in the very resolution that he now claims gave him those powers. I thought Leahy did a pretty good job responding to the points that Gonzalez had made.

[Stephanie]

4. Yes he was very specific on that.

They asked for the powers and we said NO. So they can't say that we authorized it. We never did. We explicitly denied it.

[wiggs]

2. He did do a good job. He could have been more complete

in his answer to Lehrer's question about who has the spying actually hurt....

...Leahy said we don't know who it's hurt becasue we don't know who the government is spying on. Correct answer is that it has hurt every single US citizen and has threatened democracy.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

3. yes, too bad he didn't think to say those very words . . . . n/t