US: The US justice department has begun an inquiry into how details of President George W Bush's secret spying operation against US citizens was leaked to the New York Times.
Mr Bush has admitted authorising the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop without warrants on international phone calls made to and from some Americans, a practice congressmen have suggested may be illegal.
"We are opening an investigation into the unauthorised disclosure of classified materials related to the NSA," a justice department official has said.
The New York Times waited a year before publishing the story but Mr Bush said before Christmas that it was irresponsible to make public the details of an anti-terrorist operation.
"My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important programme in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this programme is helping the enemy," he said.
The White House claims Mr Bush was entitled to authorise eavesdropping under the US constitution's war powers provision and a congressional resolution passed after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.
News of the inquiry came yesterday as the Washington Post reported that a massive, international, covert CIA effort has remained unaffected by recent disclosures about secret prisons in Europe and the torture of terrorist suspects.
It said the effort, known as GST, included programmes allowing the CIA "to capture al-Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe".
Other programmes help the CIA to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects. The paper also reports that Mr Bush has "permitted the CIA to create paramilitary teams to hunt and kill designated individuals anywhere in the world".
The CIA programmes rely on the administration's broad interpretation of the president's war powers and of the concept of self-defence in the war on terror. Thus, the killing of an al-Qaeda operative, which would have been regarded as an illegal assassination before September 11th, 2001, is now viewed as a legitimate act of self-defence.
Pakistan said this month that al-Qaeda operative Hamza Rabia was killed with four others by a missile fired by US personnel. Another al-Qaeda member, Haitham Yemeni, was reported in May to have been killed by a similar missile in northwest Pakistan.
The Washington Post says the administration justifies its use of every available counterterrorism measure as essential to preventing another terrorist attack on America. It quotes Gen Michael Hayden, deputy director of national intelligence, telling human rights groups: "We're going to live on the edge."
The UN special rapporteur on torture said yesterday there were credible reports that hunger-striking prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were being force-fed.
Manfred Nowak said he had heard credible allegations that some hunger-strikers had had thick pipes inserted roughly through the nose and forced into the stomach, leaving some prisoners bleeding and vomiting.