US: America's top law officer has defended president George Bush's domestic spying programme in the face of tough questioning from Democratic and Republican senators.
Attorney general Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Mr Bush had a constitutional right to authorise eavesdropping on international phone calls to and from US citizens as part of the war against terrorism.
"The terrorist surveillance programme is lawful in all respects. Presidents throughout our history have authorised the warrantless surveillance of the enemy during wartime. And they have done so in ways far more sweeping than the narrowly targeted terrorist surveillance programme authorised by President Bush," he said.
Mr Gonzales urged senators not to interfere with the spying programme, which he said was an essential tool to protect America from further attack.
"It is the modern equivalent to a scout team sent ahead to do reconnaissance or a series of radar outposts designed to detect enemy movements. As with all wartime operations, speed, agility, and secrecy are essential to its success," he said.
The committee's Republican chairman Arlen Specter said he was sceptical about the legality of the spying programme, which circumvents requirements of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) that a special court, operating in secret, review such eavesdropping.
He said the administration should submit the entire programme to the Fisa court for evaluation, and asked if it was true that the Fisa court was refusing to issue warrants based on information obtained through the surveillance programme.
"I am uncomfortable talking about how this information is generally shared," Mr Gonzales replied.
The ranking Democrat on the committee, Vermont's Patrick Leahy, told Mr Gonzales that the president and the justice department had an obligation to faithfully execute laws passed by Congress.
"They do not write the laws and they certainly do not have the power to determine what laws to ignore. In our America nobody is above the law, not even the president of the United States," he said. Mr Leahy asked why Mr Bush had not sought permission for the eavesdropping through the Fisa court, which had only rejected "half a dozen" requests for warrants out of more than 20,000.
"Congress has given the president authority to monitor al-Qaeda conversations legally, with checks to guard against abuses when Americans' conversations and e-mails are being monitored, but instead he's decided to do it illegally, without safeguards," Mr Leahy said.
Mr Gonzales refused to say if the authorisation Mr Bush claims to have would also enable the government to open letters sent through the mail, as well as monitoring voice and electronic communications. "There is all kinds of wild speculation out there about what the president has authorised and what we're actually doing," he said.
California Democrat Dianne Feinstein accused Mr Gonzales of advancing a "radical legal theory" which had the administration effectively saying it doesn't have to follow the law.
"This, Mr attorney general, I believe is a very slippery slope that is fraught with consequences," she said.
Senator Edward Kennedy said the domestic spying programme could actually weaken national security, raising the prospect that terror suspects could go free if courts rule that evidence collected through such surveillance is inadmissible.
"We're taking a risk with national security which I think is unwise," he said.
Mr Gonzales denied that such a risk existed, but he acknowledged that some administration lawyers had doubts about the spying programme.
Democrats on the committee want to call other administration officials for questioning, including former attorney general John Ashcroft and ex-deputy attorney general Jim Comey, who reportedly objected to parts of the spying programme.
The domestic spying programme has sparked a heated debate since its existence was revealed in December, but opinion polls suggest that most Americans believe the government should be allowed to infringe civil liberties to prevent further terrorist attacks.
Mr Gonzales told senators that the spying programme balanced civil liberties with the need to take every lawful measure to combat terrorism.