anwaya

Dear Senator Feinstein,

Like many Californians, I am appalled by the present Administration's assumption of unsupervised power, and am following the hearings before the Senate Judiciary committee on warrantless wiretaps by the NSA closely.

During yesterday's hearings, Attorney General Gonzales said two things that were of concern to me: first, during Senator Schumer's questioning on privilege, General Gonzales said that his client was the President of the United States. My understanding is that his client is the United States, and not the President: if the interests of the Union are jeopardised by the actions of a President, he has a duty to act to defend the United States, and when he asserts attorney client privilege, he should be sure who his client is.

Second, the Attorney General referred more than once to the "particular programme" he was there to answer questions about, "limited to those international calls", and when Senator Sessions began to address domestic surveillance, he balked: "But when you do domestic...but I won't go into that". My concern about these statements is: on the one hand, the committee has no more than what has been in the newspapers to go on in terms of the nature of the surveillance, and General Gonzales won't confirm that he is talking about the same programme; and on the other hand, what are the programs that could be under discussion? Are there programs we don't know about yet? Is the program that the Attorney General believes he has been called to testify on the program we think he is testifying on? How can we tell?

I would appreciate these questions being raised in committee.