Byline: Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The House Judiciary Committee chairman said Saturday the Justice Department has gone too far in giving the FBI new authority to monitor Americans and risks a return to the ``bad old days'' of abuses in domestic surveillance.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told CNN he wants Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller to testify before his committee about why ``regulations on domestic spying that have worked so well for the last 25 or 26 years have to be changed.''
``I believe that the Justice Department has gone too far,'' Sensenbrenner said.
Sensenbrenner was reacting to a Bush administration decision last week to issue new surveillance guidelines that allow the FBI to monitor Internet sites, libraries, churches and political organizations to help prevent acts of terrorism. Ashcroft said the new power is needed to effectively combat terrorism, and would not allow abuses like those of the past.
Sensenbrenner countered that there was no need ``to throw respect for civil liberties into the trash heap'' in order to improve the FBI's ability to fight terrorism.
``We want to make sure that the FBI, which hasn't had a good track record lately, doesn't go on the other side of the line,'' he said.
Sensenbrenner said the surveillance guidelines that had been in place for a quarter-century had worked well, and added, ``The question that I ask, and which I believe that Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller have to answer, is `Why do we need to change them now?' ''
``I get very, very queasy when federal law enforcement is effectively saying, going back to the bad old days when the FBI was spying on people like Martin Luther King,'' whose private life was subjected to electronic surveillance.
-- New York Times' interviews with nearly two dozen current and former FBI, Justice Department and intelligence officials, many of them at a senior level, suggest that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III faces many hurdles in fulfilling his promise to transform the agency's rigid, risk-averse culture into the kind of terror prevention agency that he foresees. Some officials even question whether the bureau can be salvaged, or whether it should be broken apart so that the government can create a domestic intelligence agency separate from the FBI.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wants to hear testimony Thursday from Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis FBI agent critical of the bureau headquarters' handling of a terrorism investigation before the Sept. 11 attacks.
While the Senate Judiciary Committee meets in open session, the Senate and House intelligence committees will begin joint closed-door hearings on the attacks Tuesday. Witnesses will appear in open sessions beginning June 25.
In a letter dated May 29, the top officials of 39 airports, which handle most of the nation's air travelers, have warned Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta that air travel will be seriously disrupted in January unless Congress delays the Dec. 31 deadline for screening all checked bags.
A spokesman for the Transportation Department, Chet Lunner, said that Mineta would not ask Congress for an extension.
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