Hatch: Court Briefed on Bush Surveillance

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
8 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Two judges on the court that approves warrants for intelligence surveillance were told of the broad monitoring programs that have raised recent controversy, a Republican senator said Tuesday.

Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that at least two of the chief judges on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been informed since 2001 of the White House-approved National Security Agency operations.

"None raised any objections, as far as I know," said Hatch, an Intelligence Committee member who was chosen to a select panel to oversee the NSA's work.

Hatch made the comment in answering a question in an interview about recent reports that the government has collected records on millions of Americans' phone calls. He later suggested he was speaking broadly of the administration's terror-related monitoring.

When asked if the judges somehow approved the operations, Hatch said, "That is not their position, but they were informed."

The surveillance court, whose 11 members are chosen by the chief justice of the United States, was set up after Congress rewrote key laws in 1978 that govern intelligence collection inside the U.S.

President Bush insisted Tuesday that the United States does not listen in on domestic telephone conversations among ordinary Americans. But he declined to specifically discuss the government's alleged compiling of phone records, or whether it would amount to an invasion of privacy.

"We do not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval," Bush said in a White House news conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

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