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But Americans still have very few details about the phone-mining operation, which the President maintains does not include routine eavesdropping on phone calls. And given the recent slide in the public's confidence in Bush, asking the public to trust him to balance the values of privacy and security could turn out to be a dicier proposition than it was in December, when the New York Times revealed that the President had authorized the supersecret NSA to conduct no-warrant wiretaps of hundreds and perhaps thousands of phone calls and e-mail messages between people inside the U.S. and parties overseas.
The privacy vs. security debate has been a winning one for Bush, but the political landscape around him has shifted considerably. That is especially true among his conservative base, where trust in the President has dropped sharply. A Republican strategist close to the Bush team says of the secret collection of the nation's phone records, "On the surface of this, it appears government is extending a little farther than was discussed last fall. This is the kind of thing that a lot of core conservatives aren't crazy about. They see it as government overstepping its bounds, without it being clear what the end product is and how all this information is going to be used."
The news also comes at an inopportune moment, given that Senate confirmation hearings are expected to begin this week for General Michael Hayden, the former NSA director whom Bush has nominated to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. (See related story "Thinker, Briefer, Soldier, Spy.") Some in Congress were already concerned that putting a general in charge of the CIA would further demoralize an agency that is feeling encroached upon by the Pentagon, which is pushing to expand its own human spying capabilities. In private visits with lawmakers last week, Hayden had put many of those doubts to rest with assurances of his independence. But now, the NSA's terrorist-surveillance program is likely to take center stage at the hearings, given Hayden's role as its architect and the White House's earlier affirmations that it involved only international communications by people with "known links" to al-Qaeda and did not have ordinary Americans in its sights. The latest revelations could raise "additional substantial questions about the general's credibility," says Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, a Senate Intelligence Committee member.
There are also new questions being asked about the government's previously disclosed eavesdropping on international calls, after the Justice Department's ethics office last week dropped its investigation into the conduct of its lawyers who gave legal advice on that program. The investigating lawyers were denied the necessary security clearances to look into the matter. Asked what agency refused the access, Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse told TIME: "We don't discuss internal decision-making processes." In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that was obtained by TIME, Senate Judiciary chairman Specter complained, "I cannot understand why the department has denied the clearances necessary for this degree of modest, internal oversight. I urge you to reconsider this decision."