http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/washington/washington/entries/2007/06/07/its_raining_sub.htmlIt’s Raining Subpoenas
By Rebecca Carr | Thursday, June 7, 2007, 04:57 PM
The House Judiciary Committee will “more than likely” issue subpoenas to unearth the secrets behind President Bush’s secret domestic terrorist surveillance program, Rep. Jerrold D. Nadler, D-N.Y., said today.
Nadler made the comments following a House Judiciary Committee hearing where he said a senior Justice Department official evaded repeated questions about how the National Security Agency has eavesdropped on Americans over the past six years.
“We want to know what they were doing,” said Nadler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s panel on the constitution, civil rights and liberties. “We are determined to get to the bottom of it.”
A vote of two-thirds of the full House Judiciary Committee is required before subpoenas can be issued.
But a confident Nadler said Republicans would surely join Democrats in demanding answers after learning of the “evasive” testimony today from Steven G. Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Bradbury refused to answer repeated questions about the program’s operations other than to say the president authorized it some 45 times before it went under the jurisdiction of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—where Democrats and Republicans assert it should have been to begin with.
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