Docs: Ford Admin. Debated Use of Wiretaps

By Margaret Ebrahim

WASHINGTON - An intense debate erupted during the Ford administration over the president‘s powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, according to newly disclosed government documents. George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are cited in the documents.

The roughly 200 pages of historic records obtained by The Associated Press reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President Bush ‘s acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings begin Monday over Bush‘s authority to approve such wiretaps by the ultra-secretive National Security Agency without a judge‘s approval. A focus of the hearings is to determine whether the Bush administration‘s eavesdropping program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law with origins during Ford‘s presidency.

George H.W. Bush, then director of the CIA , wanted to ensure “no unnecessary diminution of collection of important foreign intelligence” under the proposal to require judges to approve terror wiretaps, according to a March 1976 memorandum he wrote to the Justice Department. Bush also complained that some major communications companies were unwilling to install government wiretaps without a judge‘s approval. Such a refusal “seriously affects the capabilities of the intelligence community,” Bush wrote.

Some experts weren‘t surprised the cast of characters in this national debate remained largely unchanged over 30 years.

The National Security Archives separately obtained many of the same documents as the AP and intended to publish them on its Web site Saturday.

The documents include one startling similarity to Washington‘s current atmosphere over disclosures of classified information by the media. Notes from a 1975 meeting between Cheney, then White House chief of staff, then-Attorney General Edward Levi and others cite the “problem” of a New York Times article by Seymour Hersh about U.S. submarines spying inside Soviet waters. Participants considered a formal FBI investigation of Hersh and the Times and searching Hersh‘s apartment “to go after (his) papers,” the document said.

One option outlined at the 1975 meeting was to “ignore the Hersh story and hope it doesn‘t happen again.” Participants worried about “will we get hit with violating the First Amendment to the Constitution?”

Associated Press writer Ted Bridis contributed to this report.