US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday strongly defended the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program as an indispensable "early warning system" against attacks, denying accusations the White House had broken the law.
"The terrorist surveillance program is necessary. It is lawful and it respects the civil liberties we all cherish," Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee as Republican and Democratic members questioned the legality of the electronic eavesdropping.
"To end the program now would be to afford our enemy dangerous and potentially deadly new room for operation within our own borders," said Gonzales, who as White House counsel gave legal backing for the program of surveillance without court warrants.
Both Republican and Democratic senators challenged the administration's statements that the US Constitution and the US Congress gave President George W. Bush the authorisation to conduct the National Security Agency program, designed to monitor contacts between militants abroad and affiliates in the United States.
Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, opened the hearing by saying that while "the president of the United States has the fundamental responsibility to protect the country ... the president does not have a blank check." Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the committee, insisted Bush had acted "illegally without safeguards."
He said the president and Justice Department "do not write the laws. They do not pass the laws. They do not have unchecked powers to decide what laws to follow. And they certainly don't have the power to decide what laws to ignore."
"Mr Attorney General, in America, our America, nobody is above the law, not even the president of the United States," Leahy said.
Bush authorised the program to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of US citizens, with the goal of tracking down al Qaeda suspects after the September 11 attacks.
Critics say the program violates privacy guarantees in the US Constitution as well as the law regulating the monitoring of communications.
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, makes spying on American citizens in the United States illegal without the approval of a special secret court.
Gonzales said Congress had provided the legal basis for the program by authorising the use of force against terrorists after the September 11 attacks, adding that congressional leaders had been briefed about it more than a dozen times since.