Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter warned the Bush administration of a possible 'constitutional confrontation' after finding out that Vice President Cheney and other Bush administration officials had lobbied Republicans on the committee to stop any panel investigation into the administration’s controversial warrantless wiretapping program.
Specter sent an angry three-page letter to Cheney which indicated that it was 'neither pleasant nor easy to raise these issues with the administration of my own party.' However, the administration’s lack of cooperation on this matter clearly frustrated him.
Specter, (R-Pa.) was outraged at the vice president's decision to lobby members of his committee without telling him about it.
'I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the committee without calling me first or at least calling me at some point,' Specter wrote to Cheney. He also accused the administration of repeated stances to expand executive power, 'frequently at the expense of Congress' Article 1 [constitutional] authority.'
'I'm not looking for courtesy,' Specter told CNN. 'What I'm looking for is judicial review of wiretaps, which is the tradition in America. What I'm looking for is sufficient information for the Congress, the Judiciary Committee, to handle our responsibility for congressional oversight on a constitutional issue.'
Specter threatened to subpoena members of the administration and major telephone companies if no cooperation was forthcoming.
'The committee would obviously have a much easier time making our case for the enforcement of subpoenas against the telephone companies, which do not have the plea of executive privilege,' he wrote. 'That ultimately may be the course of least resistance.'
Specter also wants the Bush administration to submit the National Security Agency's no-warrant domestic surveillance program to a review by a secret federal court.
Specter called the warrantless wiretapping program a 'flat violation' of the FISA Act of 1978.
It remains to be seen if the Bush administration will cooperate with Specter and if not, what the veteran Republican from Pennsylvania will seek to do about it.
