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   From: oO@oO.com   
      
   Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say   
   By JAMES RISEN   
   and ERIC LICHTBLAU   
      
   WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 ­- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush   
   secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans   
   and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist   
   activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for   
   domestic spying, according to government officials.   
      
      
   Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has   
   monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail   
   messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States   
   without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible   
   "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they   
   said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.   
      
      
   The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the   
   country without court approval represents a major shift in American   
   intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security   
   Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some   
   officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the   
   surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal   
   searches.   
      
      
   "This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes   
   in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the   
   N.S.A. only does foreign searches."   
      
      
   Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity   
   because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters   
   for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's   
   legality and oversight.   
      
      
   According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the   
   program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West   
   Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence   
   Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees   
   intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers   
   led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and   
   impose more restrictions, the officials said.   
      
      
   The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency   
   can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to this   
   country, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a   
   critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside   
   the United States.   
      
      
   Administration officials are confident that existing safeguards are   
   sufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the   
   officials say. In some cases, they said, the Justice Department eventually   
   seeks warrants if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include   
   communications confined within the United States. The officials said the   
   administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and   
   notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,   
   the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues.   
      
      
   The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article,   
   arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert   
   would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with   
   senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper   
   delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some   
   information that administration officials argued could be useful to   
   terrorists has been omitted.   
      
      
   While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with   
   it said the N.S.A. eavesdropped without warrants on up to 500 people in the   
   United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added   
   and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached   
   into the thousands over the past three years, several officials said.   
   Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are   
   monitored at one time, according to those officials.   
      
      
   Several officials said the eavesdropping program had helped uncover a plot   
   by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker and naturalized citizen who pleaded guilty   
   in 2003 to supporting Al Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge   
   with blowtorches. What appeared to be another Qaeda plot, involving   
   fertilizer bomb attacks on British pubs and train stations, was exposed last   
   year in part through the program, the officials said. But they said most   
   people targeted for N.S.A. monitoring have never been charged with a crime,   
   including an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion   
   because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden.   
      
      
   Dealing With a New Threat   
      
      
   The eavesdropping program grew out of concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks   
   that the nation's intelligence agencies were not poised to deal effectively   
   with the new threat of Al Qaeda and that they were handcuffed by legal and   
   bureaucratic restrictions better suited to peacetime than war, according to   
   officials. In response, President Bush significantly eased limits on   
   American intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the military.   
      
      
   But some of the administration's antiterrorism initiatives have provoked an   
   outcry from members of Congress, watchdog groups, immigrants and others who   
   argue that the measures erode protections for civil liberties and intrude on   
   Americans' privacy. Opponents have challenged provisions of the USA Patriot   
   Act, the focus of contentious debate on Capitol Hill this week, that expand   
   domestic surveillance by giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation more   
   power to collect information like library lending lists or Internet use.   
   Military and F.B.I. officials have drawn criticism for monitoring what were   
   largely peaceful antiwar protests. The Pentagon and the Department of   
   Homeland Security were forced to retreat on plans to use public and private   
   databases to hunt for possible terrorists. And last year, the Supreme Court   
   rejected the administration's claim that those labeled "enemy combatants"   
   were not entitled to judicial review of their open-ended detention.   
      
      
   Mr. Bush's executive order allowing some warrantless eavesdropping on those   
   inside the United States ­ including American citizens, permanent legal   
   residents, tourists and other foreigners ­ is based on classified legal   
   opinions that assert that the president has broad powers to order such   
   searches, derived in part from the September 2001 Congressional resolution   
   authorizing him to wage war on Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups,   
   according to the officials familiar with the N.S.A. operation.   
      
      
      
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