http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/02/05/on_eve_of_hearing_split_on_spying/On eve of hearing, split on spying
Some prominent conservatives break with Bush
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | February 5, 2006
WASHINGTON -- As hearings begin tomorrow on President Bush's domestic spying program, increasing numbers of prominent conservatives are breaking with the administration to say the program is probably illegal and to sharply criticize Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's legal theory that a wartime president can override a law.
The skeptics include leaders of conservative activist groups, well-known law professors, veterans of Republican administrations, former GOP members of Congress, and think tank analysts. The conservatives said they are speaking out because they object to the White House's attempt to portray criticism of the program as partisan attacks.
''My criteria for judging this stuff is what would a President Hillary do with these same powers," said Paul M. Weyrich, the influential writer and leader of the Free Congress Foundation, a think tank. ''And if I'm troubled by what she would do, then I have to be troubled by what Bush could do, even though I have more trust in Bush than I do in Hillary."
Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush secretly authorized the military to wiretap American's international phone calls and e-mails without obtaining court permission, as a law requires. After the program's existence was disclosed in December, Bush contended that his wartime powers give him the authority to override the law requiring warrants.
Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official under President Reagan, said that under Bush's theory a president could authorize internment camps for groups of US citizens he deems suspicious. Congress outlawed such camps after President Franklin D. Roosevelt interned Japanese-Americans in World War II. But under Bush's theory, the president could invoke his wartime powers to override the law in the name of protecting national security, Fein said.