Patrick Leahy: “I have been very critical now for some time of the warrantless wiretapping of Americans done, apparently, under the…”

“I have been very critical now for some time of the warrantless wiretapping of Americans done, apparently, under the President's order. We have, as the distinguished Presiding Officer knows, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which sets up a special court where you can go in secret if you suspect a terrorist is phoning into the United States, and you can get an order to wiretap that call. But according to the press, the administration has not followed that law, has not gone into the court. They have allowed widespread wiretapping of Americans without a court order. This has been troublesome to a lot of people on both sides of the aisle. So we learned recently--Senator Specter and I--that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had issued orders authorizing NSA's wiretapping program, which meant the President was going back to the court, as he should have, of course, before. We asked the court to make these orders available to the Judiciary Committee. The chief judge of the court approved providing the orders but left the final decision to the executive branch. I made it clear, when Attorney General Gonzales appeared before us, that we expected to see the orders.”