Cheney Says Eavesdropping Program Might Have Prevented 9/11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...010400973.html
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 4, 2006; 12:36 PM
Vice President Cheney today offered a staunch defense of a secret government eavesdropping program, saying it might have been able to thwart the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks if it had been in place at the time.
In excerpts released by the White House ahead of a speech at the Heritage Foundation, Cheney called for prompt renewal of the USA Patriot Act. He said the law, key provisions of which are subject to congressional reauthorization, "has done exactly what it was intended to do, and this country cannot afford to be without its protections."
"Another vital step the president took in the days following 9/11 was to authorize the National Security Agency to intercept a certain category of terrorist-linked international communications," Cheney said, according to the excerpts. "There are no communications more important to the safety of the United States than those related to al Qaeda that have one end in the United States. If we'd been able to do this before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon. They were in the United States, communicating with al Qaeda associates overseas. But we didn't know they were here plotting until it was too late."
Cheney referred to a report by the U.S. commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. In criticizing federal agencies' inability to detect the plot, the commission cited the phone calls of two hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, to other al Qaeda members overseas.
"The authorization the president made after September 11th helped address that problem in a manner that is fully consistent with the Constitutional responsibilities and legal authority of the president and with the civil liberties of the American people," Cheney said.
He said that activities under the secret monitoring program "have helped to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people. As such, this program is critical to the national security of the United States."
The excerpts did not contain any examples of attacks that have been thwarted.
Last month, President Bush said in a radio address that the NSA intercepts were vital for keeping America safe from terrorist attack, and he criticized the public disclosure of the program. Bush also cited the information about the two hijackers who communicated with al Qaeda from the United States.