Bush may allow wiretapping review: Specter

By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House appears to be
leaning toward allowing a secret federal court to look at its
controversial warrantless wiretaps, a reversal of previous
policy, a top Republican senator said on Sunday.

Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, had been pressing the Bush administration to seek
clearance from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, or FISA, court.

The act requires warrants from the court for
intelligence-related eavesdropping inside the United States.

“I think there is an inclination (in the White House) to
have it submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
court, and that would be a big step forward for protection of
constitutional rights and liberties,” Specter, who had harshly
criticized the program, told “Fox News Sunday.”

“We’re having a lot of conversations about that. We’re
close, I’m not making any predictions until you have it all
nailed down,” he added.

The Pennsylvania lawmaker had said the Bush administration
may have broken the law in allowing the National Security
Agency to monitor the international phone calls and e-mails of
U.S. citizens without first obtaining warrants if in pursuit of
al Qaeda suspects.

‘NOT THE SAME PRIVACY INTEREST’

But Specter declined to criticize the Bush administration’s
scrutiny of hundreds of thousands of bank records, telling Fox
that bank records are not the same as conversations.

“I believe there needs to be judicial oversight on
wiretapping where you hear conversations where there is an
expectation of privacy,” he said. “There is not the same
privacy interest in bank records.”

Under the bank program, the Treasury Department has
subpoenaed data from an international banking cooperative
called the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunications, or SWIFT.

Based in Brussels, SWIFT is owned and controlled by nearly
8,000 commercial banks in 20 countries.

The records examined mostly involve wire transfers and
other methods of moving money overseas or into and out of the
United States.

“I think we need to know more,” said Specter. “We just have
a newspaper report and, frankly, that’s not sufficient for
Congress to discharge its congressional responsibility for
constitutional oversight.

“I want to have the attorney general on the record to find
out what we can from him. That’s a very high-level hearing. We
need to know the specifics,” he said.

Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, criticized the New
York Times for publishing a story last week about the search of
bank records, calling it a “clear violation of statutory law.”

“I think the administration acted entirely appropriately,”
he told Fox. “I’m calling on the attorney general to begin a
criminal investigation and prosecution of the New York Times.”

Specter disagreed, saying “on the basis of the newspaper
article, I think it’s premature to call for prosecution of the
New York Times, just as I think it’s premature to say that the
administration is entirely correct.”