Pelosi: Intelligence Panel Had Clue About Spying

[kerrygoddess]

Pelosi: Intelligence Panel Had Clue About Spying
January 3, 2006

According to a letter released today by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Congressional intelligence committees had at least a “hint in October 2001 that the National Security Agency was expanding its surveillance activities after the 9/11 attacks.”

Pelosi had raised questions to General Michael Hayden, the NSA director at the time, about the legal authority of the Bush administration to conduct the eavesdropping.

In the October 2001 letter, Pelosi said she was told in a briefing that month that the agency “had been operating since the Sept. 11 attacks with an expansive view” of its authorities “to the conduct of electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and related statutes, orders, regulations and guidelines.”

“I am concerned whether, and to what extent, the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting,” Pelosi, then the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, wrote Hayden.

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