Judiciary panel authorizes wiretapping subpoenas

The Senate Judiciary Committee continued to ramp up its pressure on the White House Thursday, authorizing Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to subpoena documents relating to the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and ranking member Arlen Specter (Pa.) joined all Democrats on the panel in subpoenaing both the Executive Office of the President and the Department of Justice for documents relating to the authorization of and legal justification for the wiretapping program.

{mosads}Leahy noted that the committee has met resistance only from the administration in trying to obtain documents relating to the program.

“This committee has sought information about the authorization of and legal justification for this program time and again — in letters, at hearings and in written questions,” the chairman said. “Yet this administration has rebuffed all requests.”

Leahy specifically cited Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s opposition to providing information about the program. The senator said that in addition to Gonzales’s Feb. 6, 2006, testimony before the panel, in which he failed to offer satisfactory answers, “Sen. Specter and I wrote again to Attorney General Gonzales requesting these documents. We have still received no documents and no explanation.

“This stonewalling is unacceptable and it must end,” the senator added. “If the administration will not carry out its responsibility to provide information to this committee without a subpoena, we will issue one.”

Leahy’s subpoena seeks to determine what aspects of the wiretapping program fall outside the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which the administration has used to justify the program.

“This is information we need, we should have, and whose production is long overdue,” Leahy said. “We are asking not for intimate operational details but for the legal justifications and analysis underlying these programs that affect the rights of every American.”