Judge quits in protest of spying
WASHINGTON – A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John D. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.
Two associates familiar with his decision said Tuesday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work.
Robertson, who was appointed to the federal bench in Washington by President Clinton in 1994 and was later selected by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist to serve on the FISA court, declined to comment when reached at his office late Tuesday.
Word of Robertson’s resignation came as two Senate Republicans Tuesday joined the call for congressional investigations into the National Security Agency’s warrantless interception of telephone calls and e-mails to overseas locations by U.S. citizens suspected of links to terrorist groups. They questioned the legality of the operation and the extent to which the White House kept Congress informed.
Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine echoed concerns raised by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has promised hearings in the new year.
“There’s going to be a great national debate on this subject,” Specter told reporters Tuesday, while emphasizing concerns over the White House’s legal arguments in support of the program.
The hearings, possibly in several committees, would take place at the beginning of a midterm election year during which the prosecution of the Iraq war is also likely to figure prominently in key House and Senate races.
Hagel and Snowe joined three Democratic colleagues – Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore. – in calling for a joint investigation by the Senate’s Judiciary and Intelligence panels into the classified program.
The White House continued to insist Tuesday that the classified surveillance program is legal and that key congressional leaders have been informed of the NSA activities since they began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan suggested that the secrecy around the program may prohibit White House cooperation with any congressional investigation. “This is still a highly classified program, and there are details that it’s important not be disclosed,” McClellan said.
Since the program was made public last week by the New York Times, the White House has sparred publicly with key Democrats over whether Congress was fully informed and allowed to conduct oversight of the operation.
The news also spurred considerable debate among federal judges, including some who serve on the secret FISA court. For more than a quarter-century, that court had been seen as the only body that could legally authorize secret surveillance of espionage and terrorism suspects, and only when the Justice Department could show probable cause that its targets were foreign governments or their agents.
Robertson indicated privately to colleagues in recent conversations that he was concerned that information gained from warrantless NSA surveillance could have then been used to obtain FISA warrants.