Bush Calls Spying Inquiry Inevitable

President Bush acknowledged Wednesday that congressional hearings into his domestic spying program were inevitable, but he said they would be “good for democracy” as long as they did not “tell the enemy what we’re doing.”

Even as he delivered a lengthy defense of the program, Bush stepped back from the strong opposition he expressed last month to a public investigation of his decision to allow the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on communications between people in the United States, including U.S. citizens, and those in other countries in suspected terrorism cases.

He said Wednesday that in approving the program, he had to balance civil liberties against the need to find out, “on a limited basis,” what potential terrorists were plotting.

Critics have questioned whether it was legal to order a government agency to listen in on the conversations of people in the United States and read their e-mails without court approval.

Bush’s comments came in response to a question at a citizens forum in Louisville as he took his case for the Iraq war to an audience beyond Washington.

The spying program, which was revealed by the New York Times last month, came up when Bush was asked whether the Justice Department, which has begun investigating the leaks, would “follow through and, if necessary, go after the media ... to shut these leaks up.”

Bush did not directly answer the question, but he used it to launch one of his longest public explanations of the program.

“I did say to the ... National Security Agency that they should protect America by taking the phone numbers of known Al Qaeda and/or affiliates and find out why they are making phone calls into the United States and vice versa. And I did so because the enemy still wants to hurt us,” Bush said, adding that “if somebody is talking to Al Qaeda, we want to know why.”

He said that when he took the oath of office, “I meant it when I said I’m going to uphold the Constitution.”

But, he added, “I have the right as the commander in chief in a time of war to take action necessary to protect the American people.”

Bush said that the program had been “fully scrutinized on a legal basis,” that it had been reauthorized several times, with lawyers from different government branches looking into it, and that congressional leaders -- Republicans and Democrats -- and both parties’ leaders on the intelligence committees had been briefed on it.

He did not say that some senior government lawyers, including at least one top Justice Department official, had expressed qualms about the program, and that senior Democrats said they were given limited information and were not allowed to study it more closely.

Bush said that before moving forward with the program, “I wanted to make sure I had all the legal authority necessary.”

He repeated earlier assertions that the congressional resolution passed after the Sept. 11 attacks gave him the authority to use all force he thought necessary to fight terrorists, and that the spying program fell under that authority.

“There will be a lot of hearings and talk about that,” Bush said, “but that’s good for democracy -- just so long as the hearings, as they explore whether I have the prerogative to make the decision I made, doesn’t tell the enemy what we’re doing. See, that’s the danger.”

On Wednesday, Bush addressed about 400 people chosen by civic groups, business organizations and a university. He spoke for about 20 minutes on the war in Iraq, then fielded questions for about an hour on topics such as immigration, the role of church and state in Islamic society, education and the challenges of preparing a workforce for 21st century jobs.

The Louisville trip reflected a drive by the White House to take Bush’s message on Iraq and terrorism directly to audiences around the country in an effort to overcome what public opinion polls have found to be sagging support for the war.

As part of the effort, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke in two telephone interviews with Fox News hosts Tony Snow and Sean Hannity, drawing attention to what he says were ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.