WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 (UPI) -- The top U.S. spy said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales didn't lie when he denied talking to his hospitalized predecessor about a specific wiretapping program.
But Mike McConnell, the national director of intelligence, also said in a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., that U.S. President George Bush authorized a much broader program of domestic spying than previously thought, The Washington Post reported.
The original controversy involved whether White House counsel Gonzales misled Congress when he denied that a 2004 visit to the hospital bedside of predecessor John Ashcroft involved the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," warrantless surveillance run by the National Security Agency.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said later Ashcroft had told him the visit did involve discussion of the program, USA Today reported. Ashcroft, who was hospitalized with gall bladder problems, and his deputy refused to authorize the surveillance, but the White House went ahead with it using its own interpretation of the law.
In defense of Gonzales, McConnell told Specter the term "Terrorist Surveillance Program" wasn't used prior to last year.
But McConnell also said a presidential order after the 2001 terror attacks covered "a number of ... intelligence activities." The term "Terrorist Surveillance Program" applied only to "one particular aspect of these activities," the Post reported.
