Another tangle for Bush

BY CRAIG GORDON | Newsday Washington Bureau

May 12, 2006

WASHINGTON - With falling approval ratings and a CIA pick under fire for his role in domestic wiretapping, the last thing President George W. Bush needed yesterday was to have a second surveillance controversy break out into the open.

Now Gen. Michael Hayden's nomination as CIA director has hit a major new stumbling block on Capitol Hill, and Bush is facing growing pressure to explain a program critics call a Big Brother-style intrusion on innocent Americans' privacy.

Up until now, the White House has practically tempted Democrats to challenge the warrantless surveillance program against al-Qaida revealed in December, believing Bush could paint Democrats as shying away from tough steps to fight terror.

But political analysts and privacy experts say yesterday's revelation of a massive U.S. database of phone records will stoke new voter anxiety and dent Bush's line of attack, for a simple reason.

Bush wants records of every phone call made in America, according to published reports, taking away the it's-only-the-bad-guys defense of the earlier program that reassured many Americans, analysts said.

"This is no longer a terrorist surveillance program. It is a program to surveil all Americans," said Jim Harper of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. "Why should they tolerate being treated as suspects?"

Americans were evenly split on the earlier eavesdropping, but polls showed they are uncomfortable about the prospect of scrutiny aimed at them personally.

A Pew Research Center poll in January showed Americans opposed by a margin of 3 to 1 having their own phones or credit card activity monitored.

Bush was quick to point out yesterday that his administration doesn't listen in on Americans' phone calls within the United States without a warrant - a distinction that easily could be lost in the new controversy if the two surveillance programs are lumped together in the minds of voters.

Warrantless wiretapping is designed to listen in on suspected al-Qaida calls into or out of the United States. The database program does not involve listening to phone calls but compiling the phone numbers to sift for suspicious patterns related to terrorism, USA Today said.

In some ways, political analysts said, the new revelation will test how far Bush can push the argument of doing whatever it takes to fight terrorism before he gets a public backlash.

With warrantless wiretapping, "the general sense people had was, 'Nobody like me is being monitored, and you do what you've got to do to avert another 9/11,'" said Charles Cook, a political analyst in Washington. "I think there still will be a lot of that, but this hits a little closer to home."

He also predicted Hayden, who as a former National Security Agency chief oversaw the wiretapping program, would have a tougher road to confirmation. This was seen in the changing tone of those who a day earlier sounded supportive.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the latest revelation "is also going to present a growing impediment to the confirmation of Gen. Hayden."

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) blasted Bush over the program, saying, "Americans have lost trust in a White House which refuses to brief Congress and insists it is above the law."

But Republicans showed little sign of backing down last night, with the Republican National Committee accusing Democratic critics of putting "politics first, national security second."