Gonzales: Pres has right to spy on anyone

Stories have been making the rounds for months now about government abuse of warrantless wiretapping and other surveillance measures taken in the name of fighting terror. The most prominent were reports of federal agencies spying on pacifist groups and other anti-war advocates after adding their names to the lists of suspected terrorists.

Remember all those firm denials from the White House? The insistence that there was nothing to worry about, because only foreign calls were being tapped, and only the calls of enemy agents? Well start worrying, if you haven't already.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales suggested on Thursday for the first time that the president might have the legal authority to order wiretapping without a warrant on communications between Americans that occur exclusively within the United States.

"I'm not going to rule it out," Mr. Gonzales said when asked about that possibility at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

The attorney general made his comments, which critics said reflected a broadened view of the president's authority, as President Bush offered another strong defense of his decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls and e-mail messages to or from the United States.

Mr. Bush, in an appearance in North Carolina, told a questioner who attacked the program that he would "absolutely not" apologize for authorizing it.

"You can come to whatever conclusion you want" about the merits of the program," Mr. Bush said. "The conclusion is I'm not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program."

Actually, this isn't the first time Gonzales has gone this route. After making the same claims as Bush before a Senate committee looking into the wiretapping program (while not under oath), Gonzales afterward contacted its members to say that his only-foreign-calls testimony shouldn't be considered binding.