Justice Dept. seeks leakers on phone taps

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- The Department of Justice has launched a probe to discover who leaked the details of a major domestic surveillance program.

The New York Times earlier this month reported that President George W. Bush had authorized a major domestic electronic e-mail and phone monitoring program by the super-secret National Security Agency following the mega-terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, without getting specific legal or congressional authorization for it. The president later publicly defended his decision and claimed that the revelations of the increased surveillance were harmful to national security.

The monitoring, he said, was of international calls of those with suspected terrorist links.

The NSA based at Fort Meade, Md., has a larger annual budget than the CIA and is the world's largest organization for monitoring electronic communications. The NSA formally asked the Department of Justice to launch the investigation.

The NSA domestic surveillance operation bypassed a special court process that was set up in the 1970s to authorize and monitor such activities and prevent any abuse of power through them.