History > 2006 > USA > White House / President (I)

R.J. Matson

NY, The New York Observer and Roll Call        Cagle        5.1.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/matson.asp

King = George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States.

NYT        May 30, 2006

 Bush Nominates a Wall Street Chief for Treasury Job

NYT        31.5.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/business/31treasury.html

The Overview

Bush Nominates a Wall Street Chief

for Treasury Job

May 31, 2006
The New York Times
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, May 30 — President Bush said Tuesday that he had chosen Henry M. Paulson Jr. of Goldman Sachs as his next Treasury secretary, a move intended to add economic star power to his administration as it tries to fight its way through a thicket of political difficulties.

If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Paulson would succeed John W. Snow at a time when the economy, while strong, is facing fresh challenges from high energy prices, a falling dollar and shakiness in the stock market, where the Dow Jones industrial average fell 184 points, or 1.6 percent, Tuesday. [Page C1.]

Mr. Paulson, 60, is chairman and chief executive of the Goldman Sachs Group and one of Wall Street's most highly compensated executives, with a net worth estimated at more than $700 million. He had initially rebuffed overtures about the Treasury job, which is widely viewed as having declined in influence and prestige during Mr. Bush's presidency.

But Mr. Bush and other officials — eager to bring aboard someone who could potentially do for this administration what another former Goldman chief, Robert E. Rubin, did for President Bill Clinton as a senior economic adviser and as Treasury chief — persisted. They enlisted mutual friends to persuade Mr. Paulson to accept, and had an advantage in Mr. Bush's new chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, a former Goldman executive.

The courtship included an invitation to Mr. Paulson and his wife, Wendy, to lunch at the White House last month with President Hu Jintao of China, and culminated in a weekend meeting with Mr. Bush at the White House residence two Saturdays ago.

Mr. Paulson formally accepted the job the next day, May 21, a fact Mr. Bush hid when asked at a news conference four days later whether he had any indication that Mr. Snow intended to leave soon.

"No, he has not talked to me about resignation," Mr. Bush replied then, resorting to what the White House acknowledged Tuesday was an artful attempt to keep the move secret.

Mr. Paulson, whose confirmation seems assured, would bring some different views to the administration, including support for more aggressive efforts to deal with global warming than Mr. Bush has supported.

He would also bring credibility in the financial markets at a time of huge budget and trade deficits. And he offers expertise in dealing with the rise of China, one of the biggest economic and foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

In announcing his decision in the Rose Garden on Tuesday morning, with Mr. Snow and Mr. Paulson at his side, Mr. Bush said Mr. Paulson would serve as his "principal adviser on the broad range of domestic and international economic issues that affect the well-being of all Americans."

The phrasing seemed to signal that Mr. Paulson would have top billing on an economic team that has often been overshadowed in policy making by Mr. Bush's inner circle, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, the president's political strategist.

Mr. Paulson, who has supported Mr. Bush's economic policies in the past, including his tax cuts, said he had a "keen appreciation for the role that capital markets play in driving economic growth" and added, without being specific, that the United States had to "take steps to maintain our competitive edge in the world."

Initial reaction from Capitol Hill was positive, with some Democrats joining Republicans in praising the choice of Mr. Paulson.

Mr. Bush's announcement brought to a close a long period in which Mr. Snow had been reported to be on his way out at the Treasury. Mr. Snow, 66, a Ph.D. economist and former chairman of the CSX Corporation, was a loyal and persistent promoter of Mr. Bush's economic policy and record.

But many administration allies, including some Republicans in Congress, had pressed the White House to bring in someone more prominent who could do a better job of communicating the economy's strength and could reassure voters of the administration's economic competence.

Mr. Paulson is expected to face immediate international challenges. Those include increased uncertainty in global financial markets, resulting in part from the United States' huge trade imbalance and rapidly growing foreign indebtedness.

Lately, the value of the dollar has slumped sharply against the euro and other major currencies. That trend provides a lift to American exports by making them cheaper abroad, but can also feed inflation and slow consumer spending by making imports more expensive in this country.

The administration has also been struggling to develop a policy for dealing with China, which is seen by many American specialists as keeping its currency undervalued to give it an advantage in global markets for its manufactured goods.

Perhaps no Treasury secretary would bring closer ties to China than Mr. Paulson. In more than 70 trips, he has repeatedly met with top Chinese officials, including Mr. Hu. Indeed, when Mr. Hu visited the United States in 2002, Mr. Paulson joined Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York in giving him a tour of ground zero.

Mr. Paulson's nomination drew praise from business groups, and also from at least a few prominent Democrats who have fiercely criticized Mr. Bush's tax cuts and budget deficits.

Mr. Rubin said Mr. Bush's choice was "well done" and praised Mr. Paulson as "very well respected" and "thoughtful."

Representative John M. Spratt Jr., a South Carolina Democrat, was more enthusiastic. "President Bush could not have made a stronger choice," Mr. Spratt declared.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who has close ties to Wall Street, said Mr. Paulson was "the best pick that America could have hoped for."

But some analysts on Wall Street were cooler. Paul Ashworth, a senior economist at Capital Economics, predicted that Mr. Paulson would not bring major policy changes and would have to grapple with underlying economic forces that include a steady decline in the value of the dollar.

"The best he can do is try to ensure that decline continues in an orderly fashion and does not turn into a collapse," Mr. Ashworth wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday.

As recounted by administration officials and other Republicans in Washington, the interest in Mr. Paulson intensified in February, after Secretary Snow alerted officials that he intended to leave.

Mr. Paulson's appointment is the latest in a series of White House personnel changes managed by Mr. Bolten, who took over as chief of staff in April.

Mr. Bolten has said he wants to bring the administration's "mojo back" after seeing major initiatives like the overhauls of Social Security and income taxes grind to a halt.

But Mr. Paulson was not an automatic choice. Mr. Bush, a former oil executive, has often viewed Wall Street with thinly veiled suspicion.

Mr. Paulson is also an environmentalist who has taken positions at odds with those of the administration. He is chairman of the board of the Nature Conservancy, which strongly supported the Kyoto Protocol to reduce the production of greenhouse gases considered responsible for contributing to global warming.

Under Mr. Paulson, Goldman Sachs released an "environmental framework" in which the firm acknowledged a "scientific consensus" that "climate change is a reality, and that human activities are largely responsible" for increases in greenhouse gases.

Still, Rob Portman, a former Republican member of Congress who is now White House budget director, subtly distinguished Mr. Paulson's passion for protecting parks and wilderness areas from a broader urge to restrict economic activity for the sake of the environment or to protect endangered species.

"I would call him more of a conservationist," Mr. Portman said. "The distinction might be that he focuses on preserving and protecting sensitive environments, sensitive land, and some of that land has endangered species in it."

Either way, Mr. Paulson has no shortage of Republican credentials.

Though his firm's political giving has tended to lean slightly more to Democrats than Republicans, Mr. Paulson is himself a major Republican donor, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending.

Of the more than $426,000 Mr. Paulson and his wife have contributed to federal candidates and political organizations since 1989, $370,000 went to Republicans. Nearly all of that was from Mr. Paulson himself (three-quarters of his wife's share went to Democrats, among them Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.)

Mr. Paulson, though, appears to be a relative latecomer to raising money for Mr. Bush; he apparently did not contribute at all in 2000. But the center reported that he raised more than $100,000 for the president's re-election from other donors, making him what the campaign called a Pioneer.

He also worked in the administration of President Richard M. Nixon in the early 1970's, including as an aide on the White House Domestic Council, which reported to John D. Ehrlichman. A Republican with ties to the administration said Mr. Paulson got to know Dick Cheney then, though administration officials said Mr. Cheney did not play a leading role in recruiting him.

A senior White House official who was granted anonymity to discuss internal personnel deliberations said Mr. Paulson was on the "short list" as soon as the White House began seriously searching for Mr. Snow's successor — someone with credentials that suited the times domestically and internationally.

Mr. Paulson, if confirmed, would immediately take the lead in negotiations with China over the valuation of its currency.

Speaking of Beijing's top officials, Mr. Paulson told an audience at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania last year: "The leaders are very bright, pragmatic and aware of their problems. They have done a great job at economic reform. In my opinion, that's a better first step because, until you have economic stability, political freedom isn't going to make any difference. But I think the Chinese will loosen up on human rights and allow more political freedom."

Mr. Paulson's frequent trips to China have paid big dividends for Goldman Sachs, helping the firm snare some of the biggest investment banking deals of the last decade there and giving it the first direct access to Chinese investors of any Western financial institution.

The White House official said that even as Mr. Paulson balked at overtures to come aboard, the search kept coming back to him, and Mr. Bush instructed Mr. Bolten to keep pressing him.

The official said that Mr. Paulson's concerns also included his family life and succession issues at Goldman. But ultimately it was the meeting with the president at the White House residence where the Bush team was able to hammer home its argument that reports of the Treasury Department's diminution were exaggerated.

"Sometimes it's more myth and perception than reality," the official said, "and when you get briefed on the reality, it becomes reassuring."

Mr. Paulson accepted the job the next day.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Elisabeth Bumiller and Felicity Barringer in Washington and David Barboza in Shanghai contributed reporting for this article.

    Bush Nominates a Wall Street Chief for Treasury Job, NYT, 31.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/business/31pay.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The Compensation

After Making $38 Million Last Year, Pay Is Not an Issue

May 31, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC DASH

Henry M. Paulson Jr. took home more than $38 million last year as the chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs. If the Senate confirms him as the next Treasury secretary, he will collect a mere $175,700 in annual pay — not much more than a junior investment banker makes.

Not that it matters. In his 32-year career at Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson has accumulated a $700 million equity stake in the Wall Street firm.

Government ethics rules will probably force him to give up his authority over most of that vast fortune, which is far more than other Goldman Sachs executives who preceded him to Washington have accumulated. This includes Robert E. Rubin, whose net worth was less than $100 million when he gave up the Goldman chairmanship in 1993 to join the new Clinton administration.

The huge difference between his and Mr. Paulson's $700 million net worth reflects not only Mr. Paulson's success at managing Goldman Sachs after the firm's 1999 initial public offering, but also the sheer magnitude of money paid to top executives on Wall Street today.

History has shown that the Treasury secretary is typically called upon to give up control of investments in companies that may present a conflict of interest. In 2001, former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill grudgingly agreed to sell about $100 million worth of Alcoa stock and options, bowing to pressure from public watchdog groups who criticized his initial plans to retain his holdings and recuse himself from all decisions related to the company.

But Alcoa is an aluminum company. Shares of a securities firm such as Goldman Sachs, whose trading desks and financial tentacles stretch across the globe, would present a far more obvious conflict with the role of Treasury secretary. "Considering how every word that man speaks affects financial markets, he can't have control of anything," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan legal watchdog group.

Mr. Paulson, no stranger to managing conflicts of interest, is taking steps to sever financial ties before seeking Senate confirmation. "He is expected to 'ring fence' his assets so that he will have no influence on how they are managed," said Lucas van Praag, a Goldman Sachs spokesman. "He is taking independent legal advice but the determination as to what he will do has yet to be made."

Mr. van Praag said that if Mr. Paulson set up a blind trust to shield him from any knowledge about his investments, Goldman Sachs would not be the trustee.

Unwinding his personal fortune, however, may not be as difficult as it seems. Mr. Paulson recently set aside $100 million of Goldman stock for a family foundation dedicated to conservation and environmental education, and has said privately that he planned to give away even more of his wealth.

Mr. Paulson currently has about $630 million in Goldman stock and vested options, based on estimates from the latest regulatory filings and yesterday's $149.89 closing price. And thanks to a somewhat unusual clause in the investment bank's equity award program, stock and stock options for employees who resign to join a government agency or self-regulatory organization vest on an accelerated track, instead of being lost. The result is that Mr. Paulson would receive another $70 million in options.

"Does that give him a short-term windfall? Yeah," said Brian J. Foley, an executive compensation consultant in White Plains. "But every month he is working as Treasury secretary, he is losing money by not working at Goldman Sachs."

Mr. Paulson is the latest in a long line of Goldman executives to take top jobs in Washington. In 1993, Mr. Rubin gave up his role as chairman of Goldman Sachs, then a private partnership, to join the Clinton administration as a top economic adviser. He was named Treasury secretary two years later.

At the time, Mr. Rubin was reported to have an estimated net worth of $50 million to $100 million. In today's dollars, that would be $65 million to $130 million.

To avoid potential conflicts, Mr. Rubin cut financial ties with his former firm and set up a blind trust. He then purchased a special insurance policy guaranteeing that the value of his stake would be preserved, should anything happen to Goldman.

Other former Goldman partners took similar measures before they began high-profile stints in Washington, including Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic senator from New Jersey and now that state's governor. Mr. Corzine, whose $400 million Goldman Sachs fortune helped bankroll his 2000 Senate campaign, vowed to sell his remaining Goldman shares after public watchdogs suggested the equity stake conflicted with his role as a member of the Senate Banking Committee. He set up a blind trust, and through it sold all his Goldman shares by September 2005.

Some business leaders have taken similar steps, also sometimes under pressure, to avoid conflicts in Washington. Vice President Dick Cheney collected more than $20 million after cashing out options from Halliburton, where he served as chairman and chief executive, once his finances became an issue during the 2000 presidential campaign. John W. Snow, the former CSX chairman and chief executive, agreed to give up corporate directorships and to sell more than $20 million worth of stocks and bonds before succeeding Mr. O'Neill in February 2003.

    After Making $38 Million Last Year, Pay Is Not an Issue, NYT, 31.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/business/31pay.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1149048295-Aze5PiGHqEhwfzLCYAzR8Q

Gore: Bush is 'renegade rightwing extremist'

Wednesday May 31, 2006
Guardian
Oliver Burkeman and Jonathan Freedland


Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists".

In an interview with the Guardian today, the former vice-president calls himself a "recovering politician", but launches into the political fray more explicitly than he has previously done during his high-profile campaigning on the threat of global warming.

Denying that his politics have shifted to the left since he lost the court battle for the 2000 election, Mr Gore says: "If you have a renegade band of rightwing extremists who get hold of power, the whole thing goes to the right."

But he claims he does not "expect to be a candidate" for president again, while refusing explicitly to rule out another run. Asked if any event could change his mind, he says: "Not that I can see."

Mr Gore, who appeared at the Guardian Hay literary festival over the bank holiday weekend, is promoting An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary and book detailing the climate change crisis that he warns "could literally end civilisation".

The new levels of attention he is receiving have led some Democrats to call on him to run again for president, while others have responded with anger that Mr Gore did not show the same level of passion in the 2000 campaign.

He has since acknowledged that he followed too closely the advice of his consultants during that campaign, and - before he started to scoff at the idea of running again - swore that if he ever did so, he would speak his mind.

In the years since, he has been a steady critic of specific Bush administration policies. He opposed the war on Iraq at a time when most prominent Democrats were supporting it, and more recently spoke out against what he called "a gross and excessive power grab" by the administration over phone tapping.

In the interview Mr Gore also distances himself from Tony Blair on the subject of nuclear power, which the prime minister has insisted is "back on the agenda with a vengeance". Mr Gore says he is "sceptical about it playing a much larger role," and that although it might have a part to play in Britain or China, it will not be "a silver bullet" in the fight against global warming.

In the US, Mr Gore's environmental campaign has sparked a backlash from some on the right who accuse him of scaremongering. A series of television advertisements, launched by a thinktank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, argue that carbon dioxide emissions are a sign of American productivity and progress.

Mr Gore's true attitude towards a potential return to the White House - or, at least, a potential battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination - remains unknown.

At the weekend, Time magazine reported that he was telling key fundraisers they should feel free to sign on with other potential candidates. The magazine quoted unnamed Democratic sources as saying that the former vice-president had also been asking the fundraisers to "tell everybody I'm not running".

Mr Gore would not find it difficult to raise millions of dollars, if he did decide to run. But while public denials might prove a wise campaign strategy - not least by prolonging the period of positive attention Mr Gore is now receiving - actively turning away fundraisers does suggest a firmer resolve not to re-enter electoral politics.

It is significant, however, that Mr Gore refuses to go beyond saying that he has no "plans" for such a campaign. "I haven't made a Shermanesque statement because it just seems odd to do so," he has said - a reference to the famous announcement by the civil war general William Sherman, who unequivocally refused to stand in the election of 1884. "If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve," General Sherman said.

    Gore: Bush is 'renegade rightwing extremist', G, 31.5.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1786442,00.html

    Related http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1786437,00.html

Bush Invokes the Fallen, Past and Present

May 30, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MICHAEL R. GORDON

ARLINGTON, Va., May 29 — President Bush paid homage to fallen members of the nation's military on Monday, using his annual Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery to draw a link between those who fought in an earlier era and those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I am in awe of the men and women who sacrifice for the freedom of the United States of America," Mr. Bush said, a remark that brought more applause than any other in his eight-minute speech. "Our nation is free because of brave Americans like these, who volunteer to confront our adversaries abroad so we do not have to face them here at home."

Mr. Bush spoke at the cemetery's marble-columned amphitheater after placing a floral wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, on a hillside overlooking the Potomac. The president vowed to honor those who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan "by completing the mission for which they gave their lives: by defeating the terrorists, by advancing the cause of liberty and by laying the foundation of peace for a generation of young Americans."

Seeking to draw a connection to wars past, the president quoted from two similar letters written more than half a century apart, the first by Second Lt. Jack Lundberg, who died two weeks after D-Day, the other by First Lt. Mark Dooley, killed by a bomb last September in Ramadi, Iraq. Lieutenant Lundberg wrote his parents to say, "The United States of America is worth the sacrifice."

"That same feeling," Mr. Bush said, "moves those who are now fighting the war on terror."

Though polls suggest the public is uneasy about the war in Iraq, none of that unease was evident in Arlington on Monday. More than 4,500 people gathered in sweltering sun to catch a glimpse of the president, who was introduced by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as "an historic leader, a selfless leader."

The crowd, waving tiny American flags, was both enthusiastic and somber: aging veterans in Pearl Harbor Survivor caps, grieving mothers with their children's dog tags dangling from their necks, little boys and girls in red T-shirts, a sign of membership in the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, a group helping youngsters whose parents have died in military service. Afterward, they wandered the grassy knolls and the rows of white headstones.

The president began his day at the White House, where he signed bills to prohibit certain demonstrations at military cemeteries and to help military personnel in combat zones save for their retirement. He was joined at the cemetery by members of his administration and prominent lawmakers, including Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader. Former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, badly wounded in World War II, was also there.

Of more than 300,000 people buried at Arlington, more than 270 have been killed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Mr. Bush singled them out for particular praise. Nearly 2,500 Americans have died in Iraq, according to Pentagon statistics, and more than 18,000 have been wounded there since the invasion in March 2003.

"In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly: because we know the costs of war," Mr. Bush said. "We have seen those costs in the war on terror we fight today."

Later, more than 600 members of the military who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan marched in a Memorial Day parade down Constitution Avenue in Washington. This was the first time that personnel returning from either of those two zones had participated in the event, which also featured veterans of other wars, high school bands, representatives of American Legion posts and banners promoting corporate sponsors.

Richard Rodriquez, a 23-year-old Navy petty officer from Union City, N.J., was one of the sailors selected by his commanders to take part. With the Army stretched thin, some of its ranks have been filled out by the Navy, and Petty Officer Rodriquez, who had been serving on a destroyer, left it to be a machine-gunner guarding Army convoys in Iraq.

He said Monday that he had decided to go out of a sense of solidarity with the troops there. "I lost a lot of friends," he said. "I know I could have helped somebody come home."

    Bush Invokes the Fallen, Past and Present, NYT, 30.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/us/30veterans.html?hp&ex=1148961600&en=7673ef2a9faba999&ei=5094&partner=homepage

At West Point, Bush Draws Parallels With Truman

May 28, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WEST POINT, N.Y., May 27 — President Bush implicitly compared himself to Harry S. Truman in a commencement address at the United States Military Academy on Saturday, saying Truman acted boldly against the "fanatic faith" of cold war communism in the same way Mr. Bush's administration has responded to the threat of terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America's victory in the cold war," Mr. Bush told the class of 2006.

Mr. Bush has compared the struggle against communism to the current war against Islamic radicalism in previous speeches, but his address on Saturday was his most developed on the theme. He left it unsaid that Truman was deeply unpopular at the end of his two terms in office and that it took a generation to appreciate his achievements.

"Like the cold war, we are fighting the followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, questions all dissent, has territorial ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims," Mr. Bush said. He added that "like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations for victory."

The president made a passing but pointed reference to the present standoff with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. "The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom, and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation," Mr. Bush said.

Unlike his commencement address at West Point four years ago, which set forth the argument of pre-emption that was the basis of the American-led invasion of Iraq, Mr. Bush offered no new policy in his 30-minute address. Instead, he repeated the themes of his major war addresses from the past five years.

He also told graduates, the first class to enter West Point after the attacks of Sept. 11, that "today you'll become proud officers of the greatest army in the history of the world."

He made no mention of any potential troop withdrawals from Iraq, or to specific setbacks there, but noted that 34 times in the last four years the class had observed a moment of silence for a former West Point cadet who had died in the war on terror.

"We will honor the memory of those brave souls," Mr. Bush said. "We will finish the task for which they gave their lives. We will complete the mission."

The president commended the academy for adapting to what he called the new form of warfare in the 21st century. West Point, he said, has added courses in counterinsurgency operations, intelligence and homeland security; expanded Arabic language training; and hired faculty members with expertise in Islamic law and culture. In addition, Mr. Bush praised the institution for its new Combating Terrorism Center and for establishing a minor in terrorism studies.

He reiterated that there was only one response to terrorism. "We will never back down, we will never give in, and we will never accept anything other than complete victory," he said.

The 861-member class, which includes 131 women, frequently responded with applause.

Mr. Bush was accompanied by Donald L. Evans, his former commerce secretary, who is a leading candidate to replace John W. Snow as Treasury secretary. Mr. Evans is spending the Memorial Day weekend with Mr. Bush at Camp David.

    At West Point, Bush Draws Parallels With Truman, NYT, 28.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/washington/28bush.html

Politics

Bush and Blair Concede Errors, but Defend War

May 26, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, May 25 — President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, two leaders badly weakened by the continuing violence in Iraq, acknowledged major misjudgments in the execution of the Iraq war on Thursday night even while insisting that the election of a constitutional government in Baghdad justified their decision to go to war three years ago.

Speaking in subdued, almost chastened, tones at a joint news conference in the East Room, the two leaders steadfastly refused to talk about a schedule for pulling troops out of Iraq — a pressure both men are feeling intently. They stuck to a common formulation that they would pull troops out only as properly trained Iraqi troops progressively took control over more and more territory in the country.

But in an unusual admission of a personal mistake, Mr. Bush said he regretted challenging insurgents in Iraq to "bring it on" in 2003, and said the same about his statement that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Those two statements quickly came to reinforce his image around the world as a cowboy commander in chief. "Kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people," Mr. Bush said. "I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner." He went on to say that the American military's biggest mistake was the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, where photographs of detainees showed them in degrading and abusive conditions. "We've been paying for that for a long period of time," Mr. Bush said, his voice heavy with regret.

Mr. Blair, whose approval levels have sunk even lower than Mr. Bush's, said he particularly regretted the broad decision to strip most members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party of their positions in government and civic life in 2003, leaving most institutions in Iraq shorn of expertise and leadership.

The news conference, in the formal setting of the East Room, was notable for the contrite tone of both leaders. Mr. Bush acknowledged "a sense of consternation" among the American people, driven by the steady drumbeat of American casualties.

The meeting came at a low moment in Mr. Bush's presidency and Mr. Blair's prime ministership, at a time when the decisions that they made to invade Iraq and that they have defended ever since have proved a political albatross for both.

Just as they joined in the drive to war in 2003, the two leaders on Thursday evening seemed joined by a common interest in arguing that things had finally turned around in Iraq. Mr. Blair, who was in Iraq earlier this week, ventured the closest to a prediction about a timetable for disengagement, saying that he thought it was possible that Iraq's new prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, was accurate in his prediction that Iraqi forces could control security in all of the country's provinces within 18 months.

But Mr. Bush quickly fell back to his familiar insistence that he would not begin a drawdown until his commanders said it was possible, and he noted that troops were recently called up from Kuwait to help stabilize Baghdad. He said that in the end he would insist on victory over both insurgents and terrorists linked to Al Qaeda, and he dismissed as "press speculation" reports of tentative Pentagon plans to bring American troop levels to about 100,000 by the end of this year. "A loss in Iraq would make this world an incredibly dangerous place," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush said he and Mr. Blair had spent "a great deal of time" discussing their next challenge: how to put together the right mix of penalties and incentives to force Iran to suspend the production of uranium and give up a program that both men had said clearly pointed to a desire to build a nuclear bomb.

Mr. Bush bristled at a question about whether he had "ignored back-channel overtures" from the Iranians over possible talks about their nuclear program. Mr. Bush said that "the Iranians walked away from the table" in discussions with three European nations, and that a letter sent to him by Iran's president "didn't address the issue of whether or not they're going to continue to press for a nuclear weapon." Some in the State Department and even some of Mr. Bush's outside foreign policy advisers have said that Mr. Bush missed a diplomatic opening by deciding not to respond to the letter, though others say it is still not too late.

But the overwhelming sense from the news conference was of two battered leaders who, once confident in their judgments on Iraq, now understood that misjudgments had not only affected their approval ratings, but perhaps their legacies. The British news magazine The Economist pictured the two on a recent cover under the headline "Axis of Feeble."

And while both men sidestepped questions about how their approval ratings were linked to Iraq, at one point Mr. Bush seemed to try to buck up his most loyal ally, who is expected to leave office soon and may be in the midst of his last official visit to Washington, by telling a British reporter, "Don't count him out."

Outside the White House gates, a smattering of protesters gathered, blowing whistles and chanting, "Troops out now."

Mr. Bush called the terrorists in Iraq "totalitarians" and "Islamic fascists," a phrase he has used periodically to give the current struggle a tinge of the last great American-British alliance, during World War II. But he acknowledged that the war in Iraq had taken a significant toll in public opinion. "I mean, when you turn on your TV screen and see innocent people die day in and day out, it affects the mentality of our country," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Blair tried to focus on the current moment, saying that he had heard the complaint that "you went in with this Western concept of democracy, and you didn't understand that their whole culture was different." With a weak smile, he suggested to Mr. Bush that those who voted in Iraq had amounted to "a higher turnout, I have to say — I'm afraid to say I think — than either your election or mine."

Mr. Bush did not budge from his long-stated position that conditions in Iraq and the ability of Iraqi security forces to assume greater responsibilities would dictate whether the United States reduced the 133,000 American forces there. He said he would rely on the recommendations of Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq. In an effort to cajole the new government even while he was praising it, Mr. Bush twice mentioned that it had yet to appoint a defense minister with whom to discuss troop cuts, one of the glaring gaps in the Iraqi cabinet that is symbolic of the continuing struggle over power. "We'll keep the force level there necessary to win," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Blair acknowledged that some of the 260,000 Iraqi security forces, especially the police, suffered from corruption and the influence of militias. But he said a new Iraqi government would be more able than allied officials to cope with these problems.

For those who trace Mr. Bush's own reluctance to acknowledge errors in Iraq, his statements on Thursday night seemed to mark a crossing of a major threshold. In an interview with The New York Times in August 2004, Mr. Bush said that his biggest mistake in Iraq had been underestimating the speed of initial victory over Mr. Hussein's forces, which allowed Iraqi troops to melt back into the cities and towns. When pressed, he said he could think of no other errors.

Over the winter, as public support for the war eroded, he acknowledged other mistakes — failing to plan sufficiently for the occupation and rebuilding of the country, or to execute the plans that had been made. But he described these as tactical mistakes that had been fixed.

His answer on Thursday evening, though, harked back to the two statements — "bring them on" and "dead or alive" — that his wife, Laura, had been particularly critical about. While he had apologized before for the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, his statement on Thursday was his starkest admission to date of the damage that the episode did to the image of the United States.

But Mr. Bush emphasized that American soldiers had been punished for the abuses. "Unlike Iraq, however, under Saddam, the people who committed those acts were brought to justice," he said. Mr. Bush's critics have noted that the prosecutions have focused on low-level soldiers and have not held senior officers accountable.

Mr. Blair, while saying that the coalition had misjudged the de-Baathification process, added: "It's easy to go back over mistakes that we may have made. But the biggest reason why Iraq has been difficult is the determination of our opponents to defeat us. And I don't think we should be surprised at that."

    Bush and Blair Concede Errors, but Defend War, NYT, 26.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/26/world/middleeast/26prexy.html

The White House

Covering a Friend's Back: Leaders Reverse the Roles

May 26, 2006
The New York Times
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

Tony Blair has always served as the world's Bush-whisperer, but at their joint news conference last night, it was almost the reverse. Mr. Blair, the normally silver-tongued prime minister, seemed stiff and defensive, and it was Mr. Bush who tried to smooth things over and help Mr. Blair out.

British political analysts have repeatedly predicted that Mr. Blair, a lame duck whose popularity in Britain has never been lower, will be out of office as early as next year. But when a British reporter actually suggested that this was his last official Washington visit, he looked dismayed and tongue-tied.

Mr. Bush jumped in, saying with a laugh, "Don't count him out, let me tell it to you that way." He also asked the British to give his friend another chance. "I want him to be here so long as I'm the president."

That role reversal was as good a sign as any of how the two friends' political standing has eroded since they made the case together for war in Iraq. Last week even The Economist, a British magazine that has been more favorable to Mr. Blair than most, called his partnership with Mr. Bush the "Axis of Feeble."

In the past, Mr. Blair always raced to Washington to buck up Mr. Bush with his eloquence and aplomb, spending his own political capital to enhance that of the American. Mr. Bush was obviously grateful for his ally's support, yet last night he hinted that if he had to go it alone, he could take it from here — even in the realm of the English language.

Asked what he most regretted, Mr. Bush replied that he was sorry he had used terms like "bring it on" and "dead or alive," and that he had learned to express himself in a "little more sophisticated manner."

It was never an even-steven friendship; Mr. Blair risked his popularity in Britain when he stood by Mr. Bush and supported the war. In return he received gratitude, but little else.

One reason Mr. Blair's reputation is so tattered is his critics dismiss him as a poodle, doing his master's bidding. It did not help that before the war, Mr. Blair was unable to persuade his American friend to seek a second United Nations resolution authorizing military action.

He did not have much luck with other issues important to Europeans, from an effort to double aid to Africa to the need to take steps to avert global warming. (It probably did not help Mr. Blair's morale that "Stuff Happens," a play by David Hare that focuses on the imbalance of power between the White House and 10 Downing St., is on the New York stage.)

No one has been a better bedfellow for George Bush than Tony Blair, but last night the steadfast British prime minister tugged the covers to his side, adding his own, broader agenda to the subject at hand.

He spoke of "the importance of trying to unite the international community behind an agenda that means, for example, action on global poverty in Africa, and issues like Sudan; it means a good outcome to the world trade round, which is vital for the whole of the civilized world, vital for developing countries, but also vital for countries such as ourselves; for progress in the Middle East; and for ensuring that the global values that people are actually struggling for today in Iraq are global values we take everywhere and fight for everywhere that we can in our world today."

Mr. Blair came to Washington to help the president, but this time, perhaps for the first time, he looked like he needed the president's help.

    Covering a Friend's Back: Leaders Reverse the Roles, NYT, 26.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/26/world/middleeast/26tvwatch.html

To Ease Standoff, Bush Seals Seized Files

May 26, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, May 25 — President Bush intervened directly Thursday in an increasingly tense constitutional fight between Congress and the Justice Department by ordering that records seized from a Congressional office over the weekend be sealed for 45 days.

"Our government has not faced such a dilemma in more than two centuries," Mr. Bush said in his first statement on the swirl of events surrounding the Federal Bureau of Investigation's search of the office of Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, who has been accused of accepting bribes. "Yet after days of discussions, it is clear these differences will require more time to be worked out."

The president said that the material in question would be turned over for 45 days to the solicitor general, the Justice Department official who represents the government before the Supreme Court. That step would allow the Justice Department to say that it had not given up material regarded by prosecutors as lawfully obtained evidence needed for a criminal case.

The presidential intervention came as Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, normally the administration's champion on Capitol Hill, suggested that the Justice Department had tried to intimidate him through a news leak because of his challenge of the agency's authority to conduct the search.

In one interview, the normally reticent speaker, an Illinois Republican, portrayed a report broadcast by ABC News on Wednesday evening as calculated retaliation and said that he had demanded a retraction. The Justice Department issued firm denials of the ABC report, which was attributed to anonymous federal sources and said Mr. Hastert was part of the inquiry into the activities of the convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In a morning interview with a radio station in his home state, WGN in Chicago, Mr. Hastert said, "This is one of the leaks that come out to try to, you know, intimidate people."

He stopped short of that charge when pressed later by reporters on the West Front steps of the Capitol. But he and his allies were clearly furious. "I don't know if this leak out of the Justice Department or wherever it came was a coincidence or not," Mr. Hastert said. "But I will let anybody else try to connect the dots."

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said senior officials at the Justice Department had assured the White House there had been no effort to embarrass Mr. Hastert. "Just false, false, false," Mr. Snow said.

ABC News, meanwhile, continued to defend its report. "We stand by the story," said Jeffrey W. Schneider, vice president of ABC News. "We went back to our sources twice after our first report. They affirmed what we reported and what they had told us."

Before Mr. Bush's decision to step in, what law enforcement officials described as a tense drama had played out as Justice Department officials, backed by career prosecutors, refused to give up the material seized in the search of Mr. Jefferson's office. At one point, Paul J. McNulty, the deputy attorney general who was once chief counsel to the House majority leader, told Scott Palmer, chief of staff to Mr. Hastert, that he would quit rather than give up the materials to Mr. Jefferson.

By Wednesday evening, Justice Department lawyers and lawyers for the House had staked out nonnegotiable positions, with House lawyers demanding return of the Jefferson documents.

Justice lawyers, backed by the F.B.I., would not agree to hand over any of the material, which included a copy of the hard drive of Mr. Jefferson's office computer, along with calendars and date books.

Throughout Wednesday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who had signed off on the search warrant of Mr. Jefferson's office, sought unsuccessfully to speak with Mr. Hastert. At the same time, Mr. McNulty, who has long-term Republican ties to Capitol Hill, sought to placate infuriated lawmakers.

The stalemate was broken Thursday morning, when White House aides suggested an intermediate step of turning the material over to the solicitor general. Sealing it for 45 days allows the House and the Justice Department to continue to discuss a more permanent resolution, which could be important in several other pending criminal inquiries that have focused on sitting House members of both parties.

Those include the influence-buying inquiry involving Mr. Abramoff, the convicted lobbyist, and the broadening investigation that grew out of the inquiry into the activities of Representative Randy Cunningham, the San Diego Republican who was a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Mr. Cunningham resigned his House seat last fall when he pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2 million in cash and gifts in return for steering contracts to political supporters.

At the F.B.I., officials said they would comply with the deal but complained privately that it would bar them from examining the materials discovered in the search for more than a month. Senior F.B.I. officials were not consulted in negotiations and regarded any effort to keep them from evidence as an unfair intrusion that could compromise their investigation.

The confrontation over the independence of the legislative branch from the executive branch, coming as Congress was busy trying to complete a full plate of legislation heading into a Memorial Day recess, was taking unusual twists.

Republicans were leading a challenge to the administration stemming from the criminal inquiry into a Democrat; Democrats were wrestling with how to separate themselves from Mr. Jefferson. And some were hinting that Republicans were more concerned with protecting themselves from future searches than with protecting the institution.

Mr. Bush took no sides in the fight but said the cooling-off period would "provide both parties more time to resolve the issues in a way that ensures that materials relevant to the ongoing criminal investigation are made available to prosecutors in a manner that respects the interests of a coequal branch of government." He also pledged that "this investigation will go forward, and justice will be served."

In a statement, Mr. Gonzales said the search had been approved by a federal judge. But he said Mr. Bush's action "provides additional time to reach a permanent solution that allows this investigation to continue while accommodating the concerns of certain members of Congress."

Justice Department officials said the search of Mr. Jefferson's office was lawfully carried out on the basis of a warrant signed by Judge T. S. Ellis of Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va. They said the search was intended to retrieve specific documents and e-mail messages that prosecutors hoped to find. Without identifying the documents, the officials said investigators had found what they were looking for.

Mr. Hastert and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, issued a joint statement, saying they had directed the House counsel to open negotiations with the Justice Department on "protocols and procedures to be followed in connection with evidence of criminal conduct that might exist in the offices of members."

Mr. Bush sought to defuse the controversy as tempers were rising among House Republicans, both over the government search and what rank-and-file Republicans saw as poisonous treatment of Mr. Hastert, which could be a major problem for the administration as it tries to move legislation ahead. House Republicans met privately for more than an hour Thursday afternoon to explore the situation and hear the leadership's rationale for its strong opposition to the search.

    To Ease Standoff, Bush Seals Seized Files, NYT, 26.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/26/washington/26cong.html?hp&ex=1148702400&en=2d4cebc0bc6cd3cd&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Despite Pledge, Taxes Increase for Teenagers

May 21, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

The $69 billion tax cut bill that President Bush signed this week tripled tax rates for teenagers with college savings funds, despite Mr. Bush's 1999 pledge to veto any tax increase.

Under the new law, teenagers age 14 to 17 with investment income will now be taxed at the same rate as their parents, not at their own rates. Long-term capital gains and dividends that had been taxed at 5 percent will now be taxed at 15 percent. Interest that had been taxed at 10 percent will now be taxed at as much as 35 percent.

The increases, which are retroactive to the first day of the year, are expected to generate nearly $2.2 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which issues the official estimates.

Over all, the tax bill that Mr. Bush signed Wednesday reduces taxes by $69 billion.

Mr. Bush pledged in 1999 to veto any bill that raised taxes. In response to a question about the tax increase on teenagers in the new legislation, the White House issued a statement Friday that made no reference to the tax increase, but recounted the tax cuts the administration has sponsored and stated that President Bush had "reduced taxes on all people who pay income taxes."

Challenged on that point, the White House modified its statement 21 minutes later to say that Mr. Bush had "reduced taxes on virtually all people who pay income taxes."

The deputy White House press secretary, Kenneth A. Lisaius, declined to discuss the reasons Mr. Bush broke his pledge or anything else beyond the modified statement, which emphasized the $880 billion in tax reductions from tax laws Mr. Bush signed in 2001 and 2003.

Americans for Tax Reform, an influential lobbying group that seeks to reduce taxes, had led the drive to press politicians to pledge no new taxes. The pledge has been signed by 256 members of the House and the Senate, nearly all of them Republicans, and by thousands of candidates for state and local office.

The pledge commits signers to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal tax rates for individuals and businesses." Mr. Bush went beyond the pledge when he was seeking the Republican nomination for president.

"If elected president, I will oppose and veto any increase in individual or corporate marginal income tax rates or individual or corporate income tax hikes," he wrote in June 1999 to Grover Norquist, president of the Americans for Tax Reform.

Mr. Norquist, in an interview Thursday, said he was unaware that the bill raised taxes and tax rates on teenagers with college savings funds because "no one here noticed" the provisions. But Mr. Norquist called the bill raising taxes on teenagers with investment income "a technical violation of the pledge" and noted that his group opposes all retroactive tax increases. He pledged to immediately begin a campaign to have the tax increases rescinded.

    Despite Pledge, Taxes Increase for Teenagers, NYT, 21.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/washington/21tax.html

Bush Now Favors Some Fencing Along Border

May 19, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

YUMA, Ariz., May 18 — President Bush traveled on Thursday to a blistering stretch of scrub land surrounding the nation's busiest Border Patrol station and declared that he supported fencing some but not all of America's 1,950-mile border with Mexico.

"It makes sense to use fencing along the border in key locations in order to do our job," Mr. Bush said in a speech at the headquarters of the Yuma Sector Border Patrol. "We're in the process of making our border the most technologically advanced border in the world."

Mr. Bush has in the past indicated he is opposed to fencing, and White House officials were kept busy on Thursday trying to explain the change in his position. Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One that the White House supported a Senate amendment, passed on Wednesday, that would build 370 miles of fence in areas most often used by smugglers and illegal workers.

"We don't think you fence off the entire border," Mr. Snow said. But, he added, "there are places when fences are appropriate."

Earlier on Thursday, Mr. Bush sent a letter to Congress requesting $1.9 billion to pay for putting up to 6,000 more National Guard troops on the border with Mexico. The troops were the main news in his immigration speech on Monday.

The request for money and Mr. Bush's tough words on fencing amounted to his latest effort to win over House conservatives who want an immigration bill focused on strengthening border security instead of a temporary guest worker program favored by the Senate. Mr. Bush likes the Senate plan, which would give most of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens, but he is trying to meld both approaches into a single bill that he hopes will be the major legislation of his remaining two years as president.

"Our country is a country of laws, and we've got to enforce our laws," Mr. Bush said at the Border Patrol headquarters, where outside temperatures reached 104 degrees. "But we're also a nation of immigrants. And we've got to remember that proud tradition, as well, which has strengthened our country in many ways."

Mr. Bush said that he believed a temporary worker program would reduce the number of people trying to enter the country illegally. Hundreds of Mexicans have died in the heat in recent years trying to enter the country through the Sonoran Desert, between Yuma in the west and Nogales, Ariz., to the east. Since October 2005, the Yuma sector of the Border Patrol, which stretches for some 125 miles along the desert boundary between the United States and Mexico, has reported 17 deaths.

"I understand there are many people on the other side of the border who will do anything to come and work," Mr. Bush said. "And that includes risking their life crossing your desert, or being willing to be stuffed in the back of an 18-wheeler."

The president was met here by Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, and then toured a dirt field a few hundred feet from the border, where there were five watch towers and a fence of corrugated metal about 20 feet high.

After the tour, Mr. Bush gave back-to-back interviews of three to five minutes each to five broadcast and cable networks — CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS — to press his immigration plan.

    Bush Now Favors Some Fencing Along Border, NYT, 19.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/washington/19bush.html

Bush agrees to review of spy program

Tue May 16, 2006 11:15 PM ET
Reuters
By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House, in an abrupt reversal, has agreed to let the full Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees review President George W. Bush's domestic spying program, lawmakers said on Tuesday.

The Republican chairmen of the Senate and House panels disclosed the shift two days before a Senate confirmation hearing for Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden as the new CIA director, which is expected to be dominated by concern over the program.

The chairmen said separately that Bush had agreed to full committee oversight of his Terrorist Surveillance Program rather than the more limited briefings allowed up to now.

The White House, under political pressure, did agree to conduct a set of briefings for the two full committees earlier this year, but those sessions did not disclose operational details about the eavesdropping.

Initiated after the September 11 attacks, the program lets the National Security Agency eavesdrop without a court warrant on international phone calls and e-mails made by U.S. citizens if one party is suspected to have links with terrorism.

It has stirred an outcry among rights groups and lawmakers who believe Bush overstepped his constitutional authority.

The White House has sought to avoid full committee oversight by limiting briefings to subcommittees from each panel. Initially, the administration shared program details only with the chairmen and vice chairmen of the committees and party leaders in the House and Senate.

"It became apparent that in order to have a fully informed confirmation hearing, all members of my committee needed to know the full width and breadth of the president's program," Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, who heads the 15-member Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.

Democrats, who have long pushed for full hearings, said the change would bring the White House into compliance with the National Security Act of 1947, which requires the executive branch to keep Congress informed on intelligence matters.

"The White House, for the first time, is showing signs that they are serious about oversight," said Democrat Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the Senate panel's vice chairman.

A full Senate committee briefing was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Full oversight was expected to replace subcommittee reviews that have been in place since earlier this year, said committee staff members from both chambers.

CONFIRMATION HEARING

Hayden, who was the program's architect as NSA director from 1999 to 2005, was expected to face a blizzard of questions on NSA spying at a Thursday confirmation hearing before Roberts' committee. Republicans and Democrats have said Hayden's confirmation would depend on his answers would be.

A congressional aide who deals with intelligence matters said the change in policy on NSA oversight would allow Hayden to speak about the program during the classified segment of his confirmation hearing.

The aide predicted that broader oversight could also pave the way for bringing the program under federal law. Hayden has signaled possible support for this during meetings with members of Congress.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said full oversight would eliminate what he called politically driven rumors.

Bush has defended the program by saying the intelligence activities he authored are lawful and necessary to protect Americans from further harm.

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan)

    Bush agrees to review of spy program, R, 16.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-17T031505Z_01_N166946_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-NSA.xml

Bush says domestic spying program protects America

Tue May 16, 2006 9:20 PM ET
Reuters
By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Tuesday defended intelligence programs that have raised concerns the government is spying on Americans, saying his administration was obliged to "connect dots" to protect citizens after the September 11 attacks.

A political and public furor erupted after a newspaper report that the National Security Agency collected telephone records of Americans. This followed the revelation last year of a program to eavesdrop inside the United States without court approval on international telephone calls and e-mail of terrorism suspects.

The debate is expected to heat up as the Senate considers the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden to be the new CIA director. Hayden was the architect of the eavesdropping program when he headed the NSA.

"What I have told the American people is, we'll protect them against an al Qaeda attack, and we'll do so within the law," Bush said in a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush was neither confirming nor denying USA Today's report last week that the NSA had amassed telephone records of tens of millions of Americans provided by three major telephone companies.

Critics have raised concerns that the spying programs are infringing on U.S. citizens' right to privacy. A new USA Today/Gallup Poll said 51 percent of the public disapproved of the NSA program to collect phone records. The poll of 809 adults was conducted Friday and Saturday.

"We got accused of not connecting dots prior to September the 11th, and we're going to connect dots to protect the American people, within the law," Bush said.

Republican and Democratic Senate aides said Hayden's nomination appeared headed for approval in the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will hold a hearing on Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said he was confident Hayden would emerge from the confirmation process "very well and will be able to serve in the capacity for which he's nominated."

Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, sent Bush a letter asking whether the NSA's spying programs were targeting journalists and their sources.

(Additional reporting by Vicki Allen)

    Bush says domestic spying program protects America, R, 16.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-05-17T012014Z_01_N16447377_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-1

Bush Calls for Compromise on Immigration

May 16, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, May 15 — President Bush proposed a plan on Monday to place 6,000 National Guard troops along the border with Mexico for at least a year, but urged Congress to find a balanced solution to illegal immigration that enforces the law and maintains the nation's tradition of openness.

Stepping into the middle of a debate raging within his own party and in cities and towns across the country, Mr. Bush offered a menu of proposals.

They were intended to salve conservatives who have demanded concrete steps to stem the flow of illegal workers across the border and to accommodate many members of both parties and business groups who are seeking new ways to acknowledge the presence of about 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

"America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone," Mr. Bush said in the address, carried by all the major broadcast and cable news networks. "We cannot build a unified country by inciting people to anger, or playing on anyone's fears or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain."

He combined a call for considerable increases in the number of Border Patrol agents and the number of beds in immigration detention centers with an endorsement of proposals that would give many illegal immigrants a chance to become legal and eventually gain citizenship.

He reiterated his proposal for a vast temporary worker program for illegal immigrants. But he also proposed to cut back on potential fraud by creating an identification card system for foreign workers that would include digitized fingerprints.

Mr. Bush made his proposals in a 17-minute address from the Oval Office that aides described as a bid to assert presidential leadership at a critical juncture for his administration, which has been beset by political troubles. They said he also wanted to complete an overhaul of immigration policy, an issue that has exploded in recent months into a passionate argument about national identity, economic needs and social strains.

On Monday, the Senate began debating for a second time this year legislation providing for enhanced border security but also a guest worker program and options for citizenship. Should the bill win approval, as Senate leaders predict, it will fall to Mr. Bush to help broker a compromise between that legislation and a competing bill approved in the House of Representatives in December that further criminalizes illegal immigrants by making it a felony to be in this country without visa status.

The president's speech was devised in large part to allay the concerns of House Republicans that the administration had not done enough to control the borders and that Mr. Bush's worker program would pave the way to amnesty for those here illegally.

Mr. Bush said a guest worker system would alleviate pressure on the borders by creating an orderly way for illegal immigrants to take jobs many citizens did not want.

"These are not contradictory goals: America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time," Mr. Bush said.

He said he was not endorsing an automatic path to citizenship, adding, "That would be amnesty."

But, he said, it was not granting amnesty to allow illegal immigrants who have been here for several years — working, paying taxes and learning English — to get in the back of the citizenship line after paying a hefty fine and back taxes.

"Some in this country argue that the solution is to deport every illegal immigrant and that any proposal short of this amounts to amnesty," Mr. Bush said. "I disagree."

Some Republicans in the House indicated an unwillingness to back down from their insistence on enforcement-only legislation after the address.

"While I appreciate the president's willingness to tackle big problems," Representative Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri and the House majority whip, said in a statement after the speech, "I have real concerns about moving forward with a guest worker program or a plan to address those currently in the United States illegally until we have adequately addressed our serious border security problems."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has been deeply involved in the Senate negotiations on immigration, praised Mr. Bush "for his courage," but said he hoped that the National Guard proposal would not sidetrack the debate. Mr. Kennedy said he was worried that the National Guard was already spread too thin and added that the plan warranted a close look by the Senate.

Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and the chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, said he would hold hearings as soon as possible on the National Guard plan, which he said he supported.

But among the most important voices will be those of the governors of the four states abutting the southern border: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. It falls to them to make the plan for deploying the Guard work.

Mr. Bush did not put specific price tags on the proposals he set out in his speech, which he delivered briskly and intently from behind his desk in the Oval Office, a setting that he had reserved until now for addresses on war and national security.

White House officials said in a briefing for reporters Monday afternoon that the president was calling for $1.9 billion included in a supplemental budget bill now before Congress to be used for his proposals.

Some of that money would cover the National Guard deployment, though officials did not say how much. Either way, they said, it will be up to the governors of the border states to decide whether they want to take use more Guard members to support the Border Patrol, and they are free to say no. Officials said governors would most likely have to ask for National Guard troops from fellow governors in nonborder states, who could also say no.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican, had initially balked at the plan. But he said Monday that he was comfortable, if not overjoyed, with the prospect of a temporary role for the National Guard.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, said the plan fell short. "The president is putting the onus on border governors to work out the details and resolve the problems with this plan," Mr. Richardson said in a statement.

Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, a Democrat, seemed more inclined to go along. Ms. Napolitano has been calling since last December for the federal government to pay for National Guard deployments. Defense Department officials turned her down, saying at the time that the idea was inconsistent with Bush administration policy.

The president said the National Guard troops would not be used to enforce the law but to support Border Patrol agents. Officials said the administration did not want to engage the Guard in law enforcement activities because it wanted to avoid irritating Mexico, which has expressed wariness that the plan could amount to militarizing the border.

"The Guard will assist the Border Patrol by operating surveillance systems, analyzing intelligence, installing fences and vehicle barriers, building patrol roads and providing training," Mr. Bush said.

David S. Cloud and Carl Hulse contributed reporting for this article.

    Bush Calls for Compromise on Immigration, NYT, 16.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/washington/16bush.html?hp&ex=1147838400&en=5dfa0b04cdf3947c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Experts debate Bush's use of his powers

Posted 5/14/2006 3:06 AM ET
By Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer
USA Today

WASHINGTON — President Bush has made broad use of his executive powers: authorizing warrantless wiretaps, collecting telephone records on millions of Americans, holding suspected terrorists overseas without legal protections. His administration even is considering using the military to patrol the U.S. border.

Congress is on notice from the president that he will not enforce parts of legislation he believes interfere with his constitutional authority.

These are extraordinary times, for sure, and the president says he is acting to safeguard the country. But Democrats and some Republicans, along with human rights activists and legal scholars, suggest Bush has gone too far in stretching presidential powers.

"I do think the president has pushed the envelope," said Georgetown University political scientist Stephen Wayne. "He seems so determined for another act of terrorism not to occur on his watch that he has forgotten the constitutional protections that most Americans value as highly as they value their security."

Bush is using a variety of techniques and strategies to maximize his power — at the expense of Congress, some say. It's a course, critics suggest, that both he and Vice President Dick Cheney have pursued since they took office in January 2001.

Administration officials insist they have acted within constitutional limits, citing added flexibility that comes during a time of war.

The disclosure last week that the National Security Agency is building a data base of domestic telephone numbers has touched off an intense debate about whether the administration and phone companies are undermining people's privacy rights.

Expressions of concern came from some prominent Republicans, including House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and added to earlier questions about the NSA's domestic eavesdropping program.

These once-covert programs pose potential trouble for the president's nomination of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to be CIA director. Hayden oversaw both programs as NSA director from 1999-2005.

"Everything that the agency has done has been lawful," Hayden asserted last week as he visited the offices of the senators who will vote on his nomination.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says his committee will scrutinize Hayden's role in both the NSA's phone data bank and the eavesdropping program.

Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner is among those critical of the administration's eavesdropping program and Hayden's oversight.

"I'm concerned that he had a role in wiretapping American telephones without warrants. I interpret that, if it happened, as against the law. Apparently, the president and others interpret it otherwise," said Turner, who was CIA chief in the Carter administration.

In projecting his powers widely, Bush has made extensive use of statements that accompany the signing of a bill into law. These statements claim a presidential prerogative not to enforce parts of the legislation that he deems to encroach on executive authority. He has issued hundreds of such statements.

Among provisions he has challenged is a requirement to give detailed reports to Congress about his use of the Patriot Act and about a ban on torture.

"The president apparently believes, based on a number of recent statements and policy directives, that anything he approves is automatically legal," said Stephen Cimbala, a Pennsylvania State University professor who studies national security issues.

Because Bush has not vetoed any bill sent to him, Congress has not had the chance to challenge such pre-emptive assertions of presidential authority.

"It undercuts the whole legislative process of veto and override," said James Steinberg, deputy national security adviser in the Clinton White House. He said Clinton issued such signing statements, but only rarely.

"Concentrating that kind of authority in one person is dangerous," said Steinberg, now dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt both suspended various constitutional protections, claiming all-consuming wars as the reason.

President Kennedy drew criticism for ordering the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. He blamed the disaster on poor planning and lack of reliable intelligence from the CIA, just as the Bush White House would do when U.S. forces failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

President Nixon was accused of widespread abuse of the Constitution in the Watergate scandal that forced him to resign rather than face certain impeachment.

Human rights leaders continue to decry the treatment of detainees in U.S. prison camps in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and allegations of secret CIA-run prisons in Eastern Europe.

Criticism that the administration is undermining privacy rights of Americans has failed to generate wide opposition from the general public. In an ABC-Washington Post poll taken last Thursday, 63% of the 502 Americans asked said it was acceptable for the NSA to collect and analyze phone records "in an effort to identify possible terrorism suspects, without listening to or recording the conservations."

Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center, said in repeated polls taken since Sept. 11, 2001, "a solid plurality, around 50%" continues to say they would rather the government went too far in restricting civil liberties than not going far enough in protecting the country.

"There's a concern about terrorism that continues to this day. And, on balance, people are saying, 'protect us,'" said Doherty.

However, a Newsweek poll of 1,007 Americans taken last Thursday and Friday and released Saturday found that 53% believed the program "goes too far in invading people's privacy" while 41% found it "a necessary tool to combat terrorism." The Newsweek poll question said NSA "doesn't actually listen to the calls but logs in nearly every phone number" and referred to it as "this domestic surveillance program."

Tom Raum has covered Washington for The Associated Press since 1973, including five presidencies.

    Experts debate Bush's use of his powers, UT, 14.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-14-presidential-stretch_x.htm

Bush defends scope of domestic spying

Updated 5/14/2006 3:09 AM ET
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush defended the scope of the government's domestic surveillance programs that have riled privacy advocates and threatened to impede the Senate confirmation of Bush's new pick to lead the CIA.

"The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans."

Bush's broadcast comes two days after news reports revealed the ultra-secret National Security Agency was collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans.

USA TODAY reported Thursday that the NSA was building a database with the help of three major U.S. telephone companies — a revelation that highlights the problem of balancing American civil liberties with efforts to protect citizens from terrorist attacks.

Without specifically confirming the database effort, Bush defended the intelligence activities he has authorized, saying they are focused on al-Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates. He reiterated that they are lawful and that appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, have been briefed on the surveillance activities.

"Americans expect their government to do everything in its power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties," Bush said. "That is exactly what we are doing. And so far, we have been successful in preventing another attack on our soil."

The NSA was using the data to analyze calling patterns in order to detect and track suspected terrorist activity, according to information the White House provided to Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. "Telephone customers' names, addresses and other personal information have not been handed over to NSA as part of this program," Allard said.

Two New Jersey public interest lawyers, however, sued Verizon Communications Inc. on Friday for $5 billion, claiming the phone carrier violated privacy laws by turning over customers' records. The lawsuit asks the court to stop Verizon from supplying the information without a warrant or consent of the subscriber.

"This is the largest and most vast intrusion of civil liberties we've ever seen in the United States," attorney Bruce Afran said.

In his radio address, Bush also sought to separate the debate about the NSA program from the upcoming confirmation hearings for Gen. Michael Hayden, his nominee to replace Porter Goss as director of the CIA. Bush noted that Hayden, who formerly directed the NSA, was unanimously confirmed last year for his current post as deputy national intelligence director.

The president called his choice "supremely qualified" to be the CIA's next chief. He ticked off Hayden's involvement in recent reforms of the U.S. intelligence community and his experience as a former Pentagon and White House official and in the Bulgarian embassy during the Cold War.

"Mike knows our intelligence community from the ground up," Bush said.

Lawmakers have been pressing the Bush administration for information about the NSA's database of telephone records in advance of confirmation hearings scheduled next Thursday for the former NSA director.

"He's going to have to explain what his role was," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said Friday, while expressing complete confidence in Hayden's government service. "To start with, did he put that program forward? Whose idea was it? Why was it started?"

Republicans, including Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner of Virginia, have said that Hayden was relying on the advice of top government lawyers when the programs began.

But Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., an Intelligence Committee member, said he now questions Hayden's credibility. "The American people have got to know that when the person who heads the CIA makes a statement that they are getting the full picture," Wyden said.

NSA has been working with three major U.S. telephone companies — Verizon, AT&T Corp. and BellSouth Corp. The three complied with the request to turn over phone records shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, according to the USA TODAY report.

Telecommunications giant Qwest refused to provide the government with access to telephone records of its 15 million customers after deciding the request violated privacy law, a lawyer for a former company executive said Friday.

In a written statement, the attorney for Joseph Nacchio, the former Qwest chief executive officer, said the government approached the company in the fall of 2001 seeking access to the phone records of Qwest customers, with neither a warrant nor approval from a special court established to handle surveillance matters.

"Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act," attorney Herbert J. Stern said from his Newark, N.J., office.

Nacchio told Qwest officials to refuse the NSA requests, which kept coming until Nacchio left the company in June 2002, his lawyer said.

    Bush defends scope of domestic spying, UT, 14.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-13-bushradioaddress_x.htm

Bush to Unveil Plan to Tighten Border Controls

May 13, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, May 12 — The White House said Friday that President Bush would open the next phase of the debate over illegal immigration next week with a strong emphasis on border security, including the possible use of more National Guard troops.

Mr. Bush was signaling an effort to reassure conservatives on an issue that has deeply divided his party.

The White House said Mr. Bush would deliver a televised address on Monday evening — his first on domestic policy from the Oval Office — to build public pressure on Congress at a crucial moment. The address will come as the Senate tries again to pass a bill that addresses both demands to stem the inflow of undocumented workers across the border with Mexico and the desire of American employers to have reliable access to a low-wage work force.

Mr. Bush has sought to walk a line between the position taken by Republicans in the House, who oppose any steps to legalize undocumented workers, and the Senate, where many Republicans favor granting some illegal aliens a path to citizenship. But his aides suggested that Mr. Bush had to mollify conservatives first if he was to succeed in winning a compromise.

White House officials said Mr. Bush had always understood the need to protect the border as a former governor of a border state, Texas. But they acknowledged they had perhaps erred in not emphasizing that understanding as they pushed provisions granting illegal immigrants working here legal status, angering Republicans.

"I think members of the House will like what they hear on border security," a senior administration official told reporters during a briefing at the White House. Entry to the briefing was conditioned on anonymity.

White House officials said Mr. Bush was considering proposals to increase the number of law enforcement and military personnel patrolling the border; to accelerate the use of high-tech surveillance tools and to step up enforcement against illegal workers and their employers.

Three high-level officials — one in the administration, one in the military and one in the governor's office of a border state — said one plan being considered would provide money to states to get more National Guard troops in place to support the Border Patrol. But, these officials said, such a move would be intended to be temporary while the federal government works on training more full-time border security agents.

"The question is how best can we deploy assets to have the most immediate impact?" the senior administration official said. "Part of that aspect is, 'Let's contemplate if there could be a National Guard role.' "

Also on Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met at the Pentagon with Mexico's defense minister, Gen. Gerardo Clemente Ricardo Vega. Officials said they had discussed, among other things, potential United States help in training and equipping Mexican forces at the border.

The approach that will be on the Senate floor next week contrasts sharply with legislation already passed by the House, which would try to seal off the border and would crack down on illegal immigrants and those who employ or harbor them.

Senate leaders expect to approve the compromise legislation within the next two weeks, starting an expected round of tough negotiations between the House and the Senate that the president will likely try to mediate.

"This is crunch time," the new White House press secretary, Tony Snow, told reporters Friday.

The White House was awaiting word from the major networks as to whether they would all carry his address on Monday evening during their crucial sweeps rating period used to set advertising prices. NBC and Fox have agreed to take the address, as have the cable news networks; CBS and ABC are still considering whether they will upset their schedules to take the address.

Mr. Bush has typically stayed out of legislative fights until the final stages of the process, but in this case he has come under pressure from Republican leaders on Capitol Hill to weigh in more forcefully if he wants legislation to pass this year.

"It's going to help us a lot in the debate," Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, said of the president's planned address. Mr. Martinez, a sponsor of the compromise legislation in the Senate, added, "A good strong statement on border security is the best thing he can do."

In deciding to raise the political stakes by having Mr. Bush deliver a national address on such a divisive issue, the White House is also trying to reassert Mr. Bush's presidential power more generally at a time when his approval ratings are touching new lows and his conservative base is increasingly unhappy with his stance on a number of issues, including immigration.

The unrest among conservatives is worrying Republican members of Congress who are facing re-election this year and are increasingly airing their disagreements with the White House publicly. The use of military personnel in the form of an increased National Guard presence along the border would be a potent political symbol. Governors already have the authority to send their National Guard troops to carry out these missions, and some have done that. Officials did not say how many troops could potentially be used at the border — adding there are potentially a few hundred now — but disputed reports that the number could be as high as 10,000.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California said in Sacramento that using Guard troops was "not the right way to go," in part because many were just returning from Iraq.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, complained that he still did not have as many border patrol agents as he had been promised. Mr. Richardson said that his National Guard contingent was already spread thin and that he needed those who were home to help contain wildfires. "What I need the most is border patrol agents," he said.

But the White House has been busily consulting with Congressional members, especially those from border states. The White House deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, has been holding meetings with antsy conservatives to get them on board with the president.

"I've been real frustrated with this issue," said Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who attended one of the meetings with Mr. Rove this week. "But Karl Rove seems determined to secure the border, and I like the focus on results right now."

Is he inclined to sign off on guest-worker provisions? "Let's not put the cart before the horse," Mr. Brady said.

The White House says that plenty of conservatives agree with the president but that it will work hard to win the others over. "That's something we're going to have to try to work through and reconcile," the senior official said.

Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article.

    Bush to Unveil Plan to Tighten Border Controls, NYT, 13.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/washington/13bush.html?hp&ex=1147579200&en=d5469849ee6d4f76&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Is Pressed Over New Report on Surveillance

May 12, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, May 11 — Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike demanded answers from the Bush administration on Thursday about a report that the National Security Agency had collected records of millions of domestic phone calls, even as President Bush assured Americans that their privacy is "fiercely protected."

"We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," Mr. Bush said before leaving for a commencement address in Mississippi. "Our efforts are focused on links to Al Qaeda and their known affiliates."

The president sought to defuse a tempest on Capitol Hill over an article in USA Today reporting that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth had turned over tens of millions of customer phone records to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But Mr. Bush's remarks appeared to do little to mollify members of Congress, as several leading lawmakers said they wanted to hear directly from administration officials and telecommunication executives.

The report rekindled the controversy about domestic spying.

Several lawmakers predicted the new disclosures would complicate confirmation hearings next week for Gen. Michael V. Hayden, formerly the head of the N.S.A., as the president's nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

One senior government official, who was granted anonymity to speak publicly about the classified program, confirmed that the N.S.A. had access to records of most telephone calls in the United States. But the official said the call records were used for the limited purpose of tracing regular contacts of "known bad guys."

"To perform such traces," the official said, "you'd have to have all the calls or most of them. But you wouldn't be interested in the vast majority of them."

The New York Times first reported in December that the president had authorized the N.S.A. to conduct eavesdropping without warrants.

The Times also reported in December that the agency had gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to get access to records of vast amounts of domestic and international phone calls and e-mail messages.

The agency analyzes communications patterns, the report said, and looks for evidence of terrorist activity at home and abroad.

The USA Today article on Thursday went further, saying that the N.S.A. had created an enormous database of all calls made by customers of the three phone companies in an effort to compile a log of "every call ever made" within this country. The report said one large phone company, Qwest, had refused to cooperate with the N.S.A. because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

Some Republicans, including Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, defended the N.S.A.'s activities and denounced the disclosure. Mr. Hoekstra said the report "threatens to undermine our nation's safety."

"Rather than allow our intelligence professionals to maintain a laser focus on the terrorists, we are once again mired in a debate about what our intelligence community may or may not be doing," he said.

But many Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were disturbed by the report, invoking images of Big Brother and announcing legislation aimed at reining in the N.S.A.'s domestic operations. Fifty-two members of Congress asked the president to name a special counsel to investigate the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance programs.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee, said the reported data-mining activities raised serious constitutional questions. He said he planned to seek the testimony of telephone company executives.

The House majority leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, said he wanted more information on the program because "I am not sure why it would be necessary to keep and have that kind of information."

Mr. Bush did not directly confirm or deny the existence of the N.S.A. operation but said that "as a general matter every time sensitive intelligence is leaked it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy."

Seeking to distinguish call-tracing operations from eavesdropping, the president said that "the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval."

The phone records include numbers called, time, date and direction of calls and other details but not the words spoken, telecommunications experts said. Customers' names and addresses are not included in the companies' call records, though they could be cross-referenced to obtain personal data.

General Hayden, making rounds at the Capitol to seek support for his confirmation as C.I.A. director, did not discuss the report but defended his former agency. "Everything that N.S.A. does is lawful and very carefully done," General Hayden said.

The law on data-mining activities is murky, and legal analysts were divided Thursday on the question of whether the N.S.A.'s tracing and analysis of huge streams of American communications data would require the agency to use subpoenas or court warrants.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "If they don't get a court order, it's a crime." She said that while the F.B.I. might be able to get access to phone collection databases by using an administrative subpoena, her reading of federal law was that the N.S.A. would be banned from doing so without court approval.

But another expert on the law of electronic surveillance, Kenneth C. Bass III, said that if access to the call database was granted in response to a national security letter issued by the government, "it would probably not be illegal, but it would be very troubling."

"The concept of the N.S.A. having near-real-time access to information about every call made in the country is chilling," said Mr. Bass, former counsel for intelligence policy at the Justice Department. He said the phone records program resembled Total Information Awareness, a Pentagon data-mining program shut down by Congress in 2003 after a public outcry.

The N.S.A. refused to discuss the report, but said in a statement that it "takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth all issued statements saying they had followed the law in protecting customers' privacy but would not discuss details of the report.

"AT&T has a long history of vigorously protecting customer privacy," said Selim Bingol, a company spokesman. "We also have an obligation to assist law enforcement and other government agencies responsible for protecting the public welfare."

Mr. Specter said in an interview that he would press for information on the operations of the N.S.A. program to determine its legality.

"I don't think we can really make a judgment on whether warrants would be necessary until we know a lot more about the program," he said.

One central question is whether the N.S.A. uses its analysis of phone call patterns to select people in the United States whose phone calls and e-mail messages are monitored without warrants. The Times has reported that the agency is believed to have eavesdropped on the international communications of about 400 to 500 people at a time within the United States and of thousands of people since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Democrats said they would use the new disclosures to push for more answers from General Hayden at his confirmation hearing, set for May 18.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, predicted "a major Constitutional confrontation on Fourth Amendment guarantees of unreasonable search and seizure" and said the new disclosures presented "a growing impediment to the confirmation of General Hayden." Some members of Congress also reacted angrily to the news that the ethics office at the Justice Department had been refused the security clearances necessary to conduct a planned investigation of department lawyers who approved N.S.A.'s eavesdropping.

Mr. Specter called the denial of clearances to the department's own investigators "incomprehensible" and said he and other senators would ask that the clearances be granted to employees of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York for this article.

    Bush Is Pressed Over New Report on Surveillance, NYT, 12.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/washington/12nsa.html?hp&ex=1147492800&en=b9f10d150ce41af6&ei=5094&partner=homepage


 

 Poll Gives Bush Worst Marks Yet on Major Issues        NYT        10.5.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/washington/10poll.html

Poll Gives Bush Worst Marks Yet on Major Issues

May 10, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE

Americans have a bleaker view of the country's direction than at any time in more than two decades, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Sharp disapproval of President Bush's handling of gasoline prices has combined with intensified unhappiness about Iraq to create a grim political environment for the White House and Congressional Republicans.

Mr. Bush's approval ratings for his management of foreign policy, Iraq and the economy have fallen to the lowest levels of his presidency. He drew poor marks on the issues that have been at the top of the national agenda in recent months, in particular immigration and gasoline prices.

Just 13 percent approved of Mr. Bush's handling of rising gasoline prices. About a quarter said they approved of his handling of immigration, as Congressional Republicans try to come up with a compromise for handling the influx of illegal immigrants into the country.

The poll showed a further decline in support for the Iraq war, the issue that has most eaten into Mr. Bush's public support. The percentage of respondents who said going to war in Iraq was the correct decision slipped to a new low of 39 percent, down from 47 percent in January. Two-thirds said they had little or no confidence that Mr. Bush could successfully end the war.

The poll comes six months before Election Day and well before Labor Day, when Congressional campaigns will be fully engaged. Mr. Bush has shaken up his staff in an effort to improve his political fortunes, and White House aides said they were confident that events in Iraq were improving and that the political effects of high gasoline prices could fade by the election.

Nevertheless, the Times/CBS News poll contained few if any bright notes for Mr. Bush or Congress.

Mr. Bush's political strength continues to dissipate. About two-thirds of poll respondents said he did not share their priorities, up from just over half right before his re-election in 2004. About two-thirds said the country was in worse shape than it was when he became president six years ago. Forty-two percent of respondents said they considered Mr. Bush a strong leader, a drop of 11 points since January.

Mr. Bush's overall job approval rating hit another new low, 31 percent, tying the low point of his father in July 1992, four months before the elder Mr. Bush lost his bid for a second term to Bill Clinton. That is the third lowest approval rating of any president in 50 years; only Richard M. Nixon and Jimmy Carter were viewed less favorably.

Mr. Bush is even losing support from what has been his base: 51 percent of conservatives and 69 percent of Republicans approve of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job. In both cases, those figures are a substantial drop in support from four months ago.

"We should have stayed out of Iraq until we knew more about it," Bernice Davis, a Republican from Lamar, Mo., who said she now disapproved of Mr. Bush's performance, said in a follow-up interview on Tuesday. "The economy is going to pot. Gas prices are escalating. I just voted for Bush because he's a Republican, even though I disapproved of the war. If I could go back, I would not vote for him."

Although the composition of Congressional districts will make it hard for the Democrats to recapture control of Congress in the fall, the poll suggested that the trend was moving in their direction. Just 23 percent said they approved of the job Congress was doing, down from 29 percent in January. That is about the same level of support for Congress as in the fall of 1994, when Republicans seized control of the House.

Americans said Democrats would do a better job dealing with Iraq, gasoline prices, immigration, taxes, prescription drug prices and civil liberties.

Fifty percent said Democrats came closer than Republicans to sharing their moral values, compared with 37 percent who said Republicans shared their values. A majority said Republican members of Congress were more likely to be financially corrupt than Democratic members of Congress, suggesting that Democrats may be making headway in their efforts to portray Republicans as having created a "culture of corruption" in Washington.

By better than two to one, Democrats were seen as having more new ideas than Republicans. And half of respondents, the highest number yet, said it was better when different parties controlled the two branches of Congress, reflecting one of the major arguments being laid out by Congressional Democrats in their bid to win back the House or the Senate.

Americans said that Republicans would be better at maintaining a stronger military than Democrats. But the Republicans had only a slight edge on combating terrorism, an issue that has helped account for the party's political dominance since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The nationwide telephone poll, of 1,241 adults, was conducted from May 4 to May 8. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Seventy percent of respondents said the country was heading in the wrong direction, compared with 23 percent who said they approved of the direction in which the country was heading. Those findings are not significantly different from the responses to a CBS News poll last week and suggest that Americans are more pessimistic about the country's direction than at any other time in the 23 years that The Times and CBS News have asked the question.

Immigration is another issue undercutting Republicans and Mr. Bush. As Republicans battle over how to respond to illegal immigration, the poll found considerable opposition to the strict measures being pressed by conservative Republicans in the House.

About 60 percent of respondents said they favored the plan proposed by some Republicans in the Senate that would permit illegal immigrants who had worked in the United States for at least two years to keep their jobs and apply for citizenship. Just 35 percent endorsed the view of some conservatives that illegal immigrants should be deported. Two-thirds opposed building a 700-mile fence along the United States-Mexican border.

The two biggest problems for Mr. Bush and Republicans are gasoline prices and Iraq. By 57 percent to 11 percent, respondents said they trusted Democrats more than Republicans to find a way to curb gasoline prices.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents said the increase in gasoline prices was not beyond the control of a president, but 89 percent said this administration did not have a plan to deal with the problem.

More than two-thirds said the war in Iraq was to blame for at least some of the increase in gasoline prices. Seventy-one percent said they believed that oil companies were profiting from higher prices, and a majority said oil companies were much closer to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party.

"Bush could put in some kind of regulation to control the profits of the oil companies," said Jane North, 43, a Republican from Reisterstown, Md., who said she recently changed her registration to Democrat. "He comes from the oil business, so he certainly knows how it works. I think Bush will just run out his term and not do anything to control gas prices."

On Iraq, two-thirds of poll respondents said they disapproved of how the president had handled the war. Fifty-six percent said going to war in the first place was a mistake, up from 50 percent in January. And 60 percent said things were going "somewhat or very badly" in the drive to stabilize the country. Sixty-three percent disapproved of Mr. Bush's handling of foreign policy in general.

Still, 55 percent said they believed the effort in Iraq was somewhat or very likely to succeed.

"We have enough problems here at home without worrying about Iraq," said Bill Trego, 64, a Republican from Waymart, Pa.

"I believed him at first, in the beginning," Mr. Trego said of Mr. Bush, "that there were weapons of mass destruction and if that was a fact, it was probably not a bad move to go in there. But they didn't find anything. When they couldn't prove it, I realized it was just a barefaced lie."

The problems plaguing the Republicans have clearly helped the Democrats: 55 percent said they now had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, compared with 37 percent with an unfavorable view. By contrast, 57 percent had an unfavorable view of Republicans, compared with 37 percent who had a favorable view.

The political situation has not helped some of the more prominent members of the Democratic Party. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was Mr. Bush's opponent in 2004, had a lower approval rating than Mr. Bush: 26 percent, down from 40 percent in a poll conducted right after the election.

And just 28 percent said they had a favorable view of Al Gore, one of Mr. Bush's more vocal critics.

Marjorie Connelly and Marina Stefan contributed reporting for this article.

    Poll Gives Bush Worst Marks Yet on Major Issues, NYT, 10.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/washington/10poll.html?hp&ex=1147233600&en=8779b3675ac5046d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush defends prescription drug program

Tue May 9, 2006 5:44 PM ET
Reuters
By Caren Bohan

SUN CITY CENTER, Florida (Reuters) - President George W. Bush urged older Americans on Tuesday to sign up for the government's prescription drug program before a May 15 deadline and disputed complaints that the plan is too complex.

"This is a good deal for American seniors," Bush said at the Kings Point retirement community near Tampa, Florida. The visit was part of two-and-a-half day tour to promote the program in the state, a favorite retirement spot.

The program, offered to the 42 million people in the Medicare health program, began on January 1. More than 30 million are receiving drug coverage. Of those, 8.1 million have signed up voluntarily for the new program and the rest transferred from other programs or have coverage through former jobs.

Most others who are eligible must sign up within six days or face a penalty.

Democrats have called for an extension of the deadline, faulting Bush and his Republican allies for creating a plan that is too confusing for many to navigate. But Bush has rejected calls for a deadline change.

Bush has also taken heat from some Republicans over the drug plan's estimated cost of $724 billion over 10 years.

Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat, called the program a failure and said Republicans had allowed pharmaceutical and insurance companies too much sway in its design.

"Instead of more empty rhetoric from the president and Republicans in Congress, we must fix this disastrous drug plan and extend the enrollment deadline to protect America's seniors," Wexler said.

The program relies on private insurers and health plans to deliver benefits. One difficulty for potential users has been choosing among the dozens of plans offered.

The administration has set up hotlines and enlisted the help of community groups to help sign people up.

EARLY PROBLEMS

Bush has acknowledged problems early on in the process when helplines were jammed and some poorer people had trouble shifting from other government programs. But the administration has said it has ironed out many snafus and Bush said the array of choices would benefit users in the long run.

"The reason why we felt it was necessary to provide choices is because we want the system to meet the needs of the consumer. The more choices you have, the more likely it is you'd be able to find a program that suits your specific need," Bush added.

The president is crisscrossing the state to tout the program and was joined by his brother Jeb, Florida's governor. He plans another Medicare event on Wednesday in Orlando.

In Coconut Creek on the east coast, Bush met with older adults enrolling in the program and said it would offer "significant savings." He also said the May 15 deadline did not apply for low-income people who qualified for extra help.

When he worked to push the legislation creating the drug program through Congress in 2003, Bush hoped it would gain favor for Republicans among older voters.

But Democrats believe that the problems with the plan's troubles may instead boost their bid to wrest dominance from Republicans in November's congressional election.

Bush's record-low approval rating, which fell to 31 percent in the latest Gallup poll, is a broader problem for Republicans that Democrats hope to use to their advantage.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria)

    Bush defends prescription drug program, R, 9.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-05-09T214446Z_01_N09317367_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-MEDICARE.xml

Bush approval rating falls to new low in poll

Mon May 8, 2006 4:02 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's approval rating fell to 31 percent in a USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Monday, the lowest recorded in the survey and a drop of three percentage points in a single week.

Bush's approval rating, at 34 percent a week ago, tumbled on declining support from conservatives and Republicans. The poll found 52 percent of conservatives and 68 percent of Republicans approved of Bush's performance, record lows in both categories.

Bush's approval rating has been mired in the low and mid-30s in most surveys amid public unease about the Iraq war and rising gasoline prices. His plummeting standing has caused growing worry among Republicans about November's elections, when the balance of power in Congress will be up for grabs.

The poll of 1,013 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

    Bush approval rating falls to new low in poll, R, 8.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-05-08T200217Z_01_N08202306_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-POLL.xml

Bush Speaks of Closing Guantánamo Prison

May 8, 2006
By Reuters
The New York Times

President Bush said yesterday that he would like to close the United States-run prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a step that has been urged by several foreign leaders. But he said he was awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on where the terrorism suspects held there might be tried.

Mr. Bush, who met last week in Washington with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, was asked by the German public television station ARD how the United States could restore its image as a nation that respected human rights after reports of abuse and the indefinite detentions of prisoners at Guantánamo.

"Of course Guantánamo is a delicate issue for people," Mr. Bush said, in remarks that were translated by Reuters from a German transcript. "I would like to close the camp and put the prisoners on trial."

"Our top court must still rule on whether they should go before a civil or military court," he continued. "They will get their day in court. One can't say that of the people that they killed."

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June on whether military tribunals of foreign terror suspects may proceed.

    Bush Speaks of Closing Guantánamo Prison, NYT, 8.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/washington/08bush.html

Bush says he would like to close Guantanamo

Sun May 7, 2006 1:58 PM ET
Reuters
By Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said he would like to close the U.S.-run prison at Guantanamo Bay -- a step urged by several U.S. allies -- but was awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on how suspects held there might be tried.

"Of course Guantanamo is a delicate issue for people. I would like to close the camp and put the prisoners on trial," Bush said in comments to German television to be broadcast on Sunday night. The interview was recorded last week.

Human-rights groups have accused the United States of mistreating Guantanamo detainees through cruel interrogation methods, a charge denied by the U.S. government.

They also criticize the indefinite detention of suspects captured since the military prison was opened in 2002 at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, as part of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

Bush was asked by the German public television station ARD how the United States could restore its human-rights image following reports of prisoner abuse.

"Our top court must still rule on whether they should go before a civil or military court," he said.

"They will get their day in court. One can't say that of the people that they killed. They didn't give these people the opportunity for a fair trial."

The quotes were translated by Reuters from a German transcript.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June on whether military tribunals of foreign terrorist suspects can proceed.

Bush's comments were a reiteration of long-standing U.S. policy, Frederick Jones, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in Washington.

"The United States has no intention of permanently detaining individuals, that is not our goal. We want to see all these individuals brought to justice," he said, whether in their home countries or in the United States.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, has dismissed calls for the prison to be closed.

"Every once and a while someone pops up and gets some press for saying 'Oh let's close Guantanamo Bay.' Well, if someone has a better idea, I'd like to hear it," Rumsfeld said in a February speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The United States has 480 detainees at Guantanamo and has freed or handed over to their home governments a total of 272. The Pentagon has said it has no interest in holding anyone longer than necessary but that it has been unable to arrange for some to return to their home countries.

The Pentagon says the detainees come from 40 countries and the West Bank, with the largest number from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen.

In a report last week for the U.N. Committee against Torture, Amnesty International said torture and inhumane treatment were "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers, including Guantanamo Bay.

The United States defended its treatment of foreign terrorism suspects in a hearing before the committee in Geneva on Friday, saying it backed a ban on torture.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in Washington)

    Bush says he would like to close Guantanamo, R, 7.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-05-07T175815Z_01_B597743_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-GUANTANAMO.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-U.S.+NewsNews-3

Bush Urges Graduates to Use Science to Protect Human Dignity

May 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

STILLWATER, Okla., May 6 — President Bush told 2,700 graduates of Oklahoma State University on Saturday that advances in technology presented them with choices and dilemmas as they faced a future "at one of the most hopeful moments in human history."

Under cold, drizzling skies at Boone Pickens Stadium, Mr. Bush made no mention of the war in Iraq, high gas prices or other problems confronting the nation. Instead he painted an optimistic picture of America and said that "the job market for college graduates is the best it's been in years," even in the face of weak job growth reported by the government on Friday.

Mr. Bush's advice to the cheering graduates in the politically friendly territory of Oklahoma was to harness technology without becoming slaves to it.

"Science offers the prospect of eventual cures for terrible diseases and temptations to manipulate life and violate human dignity," Mr. Bush said, an evident reference to cloning and his support of strict limits on stem cell research.

The president added that "with the Internet, you can communicate instantly with someone halfway across the world and isolate yourself from your family and neighbors." He then admonished the graduates to "ensure that science serves the cause of humanity and not the other way around."

Mr. Bush, who won Oklahoma overwhelmingly in the 2004 presidential election, promised the students that they would see more cars powered by hydrogen and that within their lifetimes "the gasoline engine will seem as antiquated as the rotary phone and the black-and-white TV."

He also drew comparisons to his own years at Yale four decades ago.

"When I was in college, we listened to music on 45 r.p.m. records as opposed to the iPod," Mr. Bush said. "We used manual typewriters instead of the personal computer. When we made a mistake while writing a paper, we didn't have the luxury of spell-check. As a matter of fact, we used something that maybe some of you have heard of. It was big and bulky; it's called a dictionary."

Mr. Bush used the commencement address, the first of three this month, to touch on some major themes of his second term, including what he said was the imperative of the United States to spread liberty around the world and face up to global competition.

"When Oklahoma was settled in the late 19th century, this was America's frontier," Mr. Bush said. "Now the whole world is within reach. You can e-mail friends in Central America, or you can fly nonstop across the Atlantic or Pacific, or you can use your Bank of Oklahoma card and withdraw money from an A.T.M. in Australia."

The president added that competition from countries like China and India had created uncertainty, but that it was wrong to "wall America off from the world and to retreat into protectionism."

"This is a sure path to stagnation and decline,' Mr. Bush said. "I ask you to reject this kind of pessimism."

At the end of the ceremony, Mr. Bush was presented with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, then took off on Marine One. Next week he is to deliver a commencement address at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Biloxi.

    Bush Urges Graduates to Use Science to Protect Human Dignity, NYT, 7.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/washington/07bush.html

Bush Renews Veto Threat on Spending Bill

May 4, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, May 3 — President Bush prodded Congress over tax cuts on Wednesday and renewed his threat to veto a bill that would pay for the Iraq war and Gulf Coast recovery if the Senate measure's price tag was too high.

Even as the president issued his warning, lawmakers added special requests to the bill, ratcheting up its cost to $109 billion, well over Mr. Bush's ceiling of $92.2 billion for the war and hurricane recovery, with an additional $2.3 billion to prepare for a flu pandemic.

Mr. Bush, who has not vetoed any bill, accused "some here in Washington with trying to load up that bill with unnecessary spending."

"The Congress needs to hear me loud and clear," Mr. Bush said in a speech to the American Council of Engineering Companies. "If they spend more than $92.2 billion plus pandemic flu emergency funds, I will veto this bill."

Mr. Bush also made his case for the economic benefits of tax cuts as Congressional negotiators closed in on a $70 billion deal to extend lower tax rates on investments until 2010 while taking steps to shield some taxpayers from the effects of the alternative minimum tax.

The Senate did not seem deterred by the veto threat, adding $289 million at the request of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to compensate emergency workers who might be injured by experimental flu vaccines.

That action followed approval of an extra $1.6 billion for levees in Louisiana, $30 million for Gulf Coast election assistance and $30 million for forest projects.

Senate conservatives tried, but failed, to strip the measure of spending that they argued was unnecessary and did not qualify for treatment as an emergency. The critics were able to eliminate just a $15 million seafood-promotion campaign, leaving a significant gap among the overall spending targets of the Senate, Mr. Bush and House Republicans, who this year approved a $91.9 billion emergency bill.

This week, House Republican leaders accused the Senate of embarking on a "huge spending spree" and backed Mr. Bush in his veto threat, raising the likelihood that negotiations on a final measure would be tough.

"The American people don't deserve a special-interest shopping cart disguised as a supplemental," Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader, said in a joint statement, using the legislative term for the emergency spending bill.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate say they anticipate that the spending will be pared in negotiations.

"I can't believe the Republican Congress is going to send the president a bill he would veto," said Senator Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. "It would be extremely foolish of us, especially when he is right and we are wrong."

After months of talks, negotiators tried to wrap up the details of a tax cut package desperately sought by Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans who want to record a legislative success as they prepare for midterm elections.

Under the agreement, the 15 percent maximum tax rate on capital gains and dividends would be extended to 2010. The exemption on the alternative minimum tax, originally created to make sure that the affluent paid some income taxes, would be raised to protect millions of middle-income taxpayers from being affected by it.

"These lower rates have allowed millions of taxpayers to keep more money in their pockets to spend in the economy or add to their savings through reinvestment, rather than give it to the federal government to spend," said Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

The deal does not include a Senate-passed plan that would have generated more than $4 billion from major American oil companies through a required accounting change. The tax accord would be incorporated in a measure that would be protected from a filibuster in the Senate under special budget rules.

Before signing off on the deal, Mr. Grassley sought assurances that other expiring tax breaks, including one for research and development and another for teachers who buy their school supplies, would be extended in a separate measure.

Mr. Bush said uncertainty about the future of the tax breaks was stifling investment.

    Bush Renews Veto Threat on Spending Bill, NYT, 4.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/04/washington/04spend.html

James Swindal, 88, Pilot of Kennedy's Presidential Plane, Dies

May 1, 2006
The New York Times
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Col. James B. Swindal, the Air Force One pilot who flew John F. Kennedy's body back to Washington in the hours after his assassination in Dallas, died Tuesday at a hospital in Cocoa Beach, Fla. He was 88.

The cause was heart failure after complications from a broken hip, said his son, James L. Swindal.

Colonel Swindal became the commander of Air Force One — the designation for any plane carrying a president — at the beginning of Kennedy's presidency.

On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, he landed the blue and white presidential jet, a converted Boeing 707, at Love Field in Dallas. Colonel Swindal was monitoring the Secret Service frequency from his cockpit while Kennedy rode in a downtown motorcade. At 12:30 p.m., he heard the voice of a Secret Service agent, Roy Kellerman, from Kennedy's limousine: "Lancer is hurt. It looks bad. We have to get to a hospital."

Lancer was Kennedy's Secret Service code name.

Soon afterward, the Secret Service communications gear on Air Force One went dead. Colonel Swindal, who relived those moments in "The Death of a President" by William Manchester, received a phone call from the Kennedy entourage telling him to fuel his plane for a return to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. But he was given no explanation. Only by watching the plane's television sets did he learn that Kennedy had been shot.

Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had also been riding in the motorcade, was brought to Air Force One shortly after 1:30. Some forty-five minutes later, the coffin bearing Kennedy's body, accompanied by his wife, Jacqueline, was taken aboard, seats in the rear having been removed to provide the space.

Colonel Swindal cranked up engine No. 3, preparing for takeoff. But Johnson wanted to be sworn in before departing, and he awaited the arrival of Sarah T. Hughes, a federal judge, to administer the oath.

Malcolm Kilduff, the assistant press secretary, told Colonel Swindal to cut the engine off. But seconds later, Brig. Gen. Godfrey McHugh, Kennedy's Air Force aide, having just arrived with the coffin and unaware that Johnson was aboard, demanded that Colonel Swindal lift off immediately. Colonel Swindal pointed to the directive from Mr. Kilduff.

Colonel Swindal's co-pilot, Lt. Col. Lewis Hanson, fearing that the plane might be a target as part of a wide conspiracy, warmed up the engines twice on his own during the wait for the judge, according to Mr. Manchester's account.

When Judge Hughes arrived, Colonel Swindal escorted her up the ramp, but he did not leave his cockpit to witness Johnson's swearing in. "I just didn't want to be in the picture," he recalled. "I didn't belong to the Lyndon Johnson team. My president was in that box."

Departing from Love Field at 2:47, Colonel Swindal took Air Force One to an unusually high altitude of 41,000 feet. "He didn't have any idea whether this was part of a large conspiracy," his son said by telephone on Saturday. "He wasn't going to take any chances with a new president in the plane."

Colonel Swindal, as he told it to Mr. Manchester, "felt that the world had ended" as he flew eastward. "It became a struggle to continue."

But he made a perfect landing a few moments after 6 p.m. Three days later, he flew over Arlington National Cemetery in Air Force One during Kennedy's funeral, a final tribute.

James Barney Swindal, an Alabama native, entered military service shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He flew transport planes in the China-Burma-India theater in World War II and participated in the Berlin airlift of the late 1940's. He continued to fly Air Force One early in the Johnson administration and retired from military service in 1971.

In addition to his son, of East Hampton, Conn., he is survived by his wife, Emily; a daughter, Kathryn Swindal, of Leesburg, Va.; two grandsons; and a great-grandson.

Colonel Swindal sat in the cockpit of his presidential jetliner for the final time in May 1998, telling of his brush with history in a ceremony at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where the four-engine plane, tail No. 26000, was being retired. It stands there today, a centerpiece of the United States Air Force Museum.

    James Swindal, 88, Pilot of Kennedy's Presidential Plane, Dies, NYT, 1.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/us/01swindal.html


 

President Bush, left, and Steve Bridges, a Bush impersonator,
performed a stand-up routine at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday.

Pool photograph by Roger L. Wollenberg

 At Annual Correspondents' Dinner, a Set of Bush Twins Steal the Show        NYT        1.5.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/washington/01letter.html?hp&ex=
1146542400&en=991091c2061e22db&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Washington Letter

At Annual Correspondents' Dinner, a Set of Bush Twins Steal the Show

May 1, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON

It was love at first sight. When President Bush met Steve Bridges, a Bush impersonator, three years ago in the Oval Office, he immediately thought that he and his doppelganger could gang up at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

As Mr. Bush told Mr. Bridges, according to Mr. Bridges's manager, who attended the meeting: "Every year they have the White House correspondents' dinner, where everybody goes and leaves having had a good time except for the president."

So on Saturday night, in a duet of a stand-up routine at the annual press Bacchanalia, Mr. Bush seemed to have a less painful time than usual with Mr. Bridges as his sidekick and inner voice.

Mr. Bush, from the stage in the cavelike Washington Hilton ballroom: "As you know, I always look forward to these dinners."

Mr. Bridges, standing aside the president at an identical lectern: "It's just a bunch of media types, Hollywood liberals, Democrats like Joe Biden there. How come I can't have dinner with the 36 percent of the people who like me?"

Mr. Bush: "I'm sorry that Vice President Cheney couldn't be here tonight. I agree with the press that Dick was a little late reporting that hunting episode down in Texas. In fact, I didn't know a thing about it till I saw him on 'America's Most Wanted.' "

Mr. Bridges: "You reporters would go nuts if you knew the full story. He was drunk as a skunk! On one beer! Light beer! Oh, people were duckin' and divin' for cover. I wish I'd been there. I saw him coming down the hall the other day, I looked at him and said, 'Don't shoot!' "

White House officials and Mr. Bridges said the double stand-up was the idea of the president, who last year ceded his spot on the program to his wife and in previous years relied on slide shows as visual props for his routines. As the 2,500-plus guests at the annual event know, by tradition the president is supposed to make fun of himself in an effort to establish his regular-guy credentials and ingratiate himself with the press.

With his approval ratings in the mid-30's and a White House beset by troubles, there is some evidence that Mr. Bush worked harder on his performance this year than in the past. At the very least, he started focusing on his stand-up as long ago as January, when he asked Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor, to contact Mr. Bridges and Landon Parvin, a longtime speechwriter.

For Mr. Bush, the timing seemed right. He had known about Mr. Bridges, who appears regularly as a Bush impersonator on "The Tonight Show," since 2002. At Christmas that year at the president's ranch, Barbara Bush, the president's mother, showed her son and the assembled clan a video of Mr. Bridges imitating Mr. Bush that had been used to introduce her at an appearance in Texas. Mr. Bush, amused, asked to meet Mr. Bridges, and eventually got together with him in Washington on Feb. 24, 2003, three weeks before the American-led invasion of Iraq.

"Maybe he needed a break or something," said Randy Nolen, Mr. Bridges's manager. "We had him laughing."

Mr. Nolen said that Mr. Bush greeted Mr. Bridges by opening his arms and asking, "Is this me?" and that the president and the impersonator spent 20 minutes together. Mr. Bridges did his imitation of Mr. Bush and talked about the two and a half hours it takes to apply the makeup he needs to morph into the president.

"Everything but his eyes and teeth are fake," Mr. Nolen said.

Mr. Bush told Mr. Bridges, Mr. Nolen said, that the time was not right for comedy, but that in the future they had to get together and do "something big." This year's correspondents' dinner was apparently big enough, and by mid-April Mr. Parvin had a script. Mr. Parvin, who has written jokes for Mr. Bush and former President Ronald Reagan, then had a run-through with Mr. Bush in the Oval Office.

Last Friday was the dress rehearsal with Mr. Bridges in the White House family theater. Mr. Bartlett and Joshua B. Bolten, the new White House chief of staff, attended, but many other senior aides were kept out to keep it secret. Mr. Bush and Mr. Bridges did two straight run-throughs.

"I was so nervous," Mr. Bridges said yesterday by telephone from California, after a morning flight from Washington. "I had a twitch in my eye for two weeks." The session soon dissolved into laughter, but Mr. Bush was instructed to keep a straight face during the actual performance.

It was at the dress rehearsal, Mr. Parvin said, that Mr. Bush suggested adding a line for Mr. Bridges that the first lady "is hot," and Mr. Bridges suggested following up with "muy caliente," or "very hot." Both additions were in the final routine.

Other lines came from Mr. Bridges's regular spoof of Mr. Bush, like "Yes, my fellow Americans, in the words of Sigmund Freud, 'I have a dream.' " One line, delivered by Mr. Bush, was particularly topical: "I'm feeling pretty chipper tonight — I survived the White House shake-up."

Other lines made fun of Mr. Bush's pronunciation difficulties.

Mr. Bridges: "We must enhance noncompliance protocols sanctioned not only at I.A.E.A. formal sessions but through intercessional contact."

Mr. Bush: "We must enhance noncompliance protocols sanctioned not only at E-I-E-I-O formal sessions but through intersexual contact."

So did the laughter in the ballroom help Mr. Bush in his time of political trouble?

"I have no idea," Mr. Parvin said. "The way we looked at it, we were just going to have a good time and get through it."

    At Annual Correspondents' Dinner, a Set of Bush Twins Steal the Show, NYT, 1.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/washington/01letter.html?hp&ex=1146542400&en=991091c2061e22db&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Enters Anthem Fight on Language

April 29, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, April 28—President Bush has never been shy about speaking Spanish in public, and he is known to love all kinds of music: country, folk and even Tex-Mex style rock. But one thing you will not find on his iPod: "Nuestro Himno," the new Spanish version of the national anthem that was released on Friday as part of the growing immigrants' rights movement.

Asked at a news briefing in the Rose Garden on Friday whether he believed the anthem would have the same value in Spanish as it did in English, Mr. Bush said flatly, "No, I don't."

"And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English," Mr. Bush said. "And they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."

Mr. Bush has tried to occupy a middle ground in the raging debate over immigration, supporting legislation that would grant immigrant workers temporary legal status and perhaps a path to citizenship, while pushing for immigrants to learn English also pressing for more steps to stop the flow of newcomers over the border. But his statement about the anthem was taken by members of both parties as a clear signal to conservatives that he stood with them on what many of them see as a clash between national identity and multiculturalism.

His remarks touched directly on the divide over the impact of immigrants on the nation's culture, crystallized this time by the release of the Spanish version of the anthem, loosely translated and featuring Spanish-language stars like Gloria Trevi and Carlos Ponce.

Adam Kidron, chief executive of the label that released the new version of the anthem, Urban Box Office Records, said in a statement that the song helped those who did not speak English "to fully understand the character of 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' the American flag and the ideals of freedom that they represent."

The song, which includes some departures from the original lyrics, was distributed to Spanish-language radio stations, many of which have been encouraging huge numbers of protesters to take to the streets in recent weeks. Another large action is scheduled for many cities on Monday, when some immigrant rights groups are calling for a nationwide economic boycott.

The anthem has fed into a backlash on talk radio, the Internet, cable television and Capitol Hill, with conservatives complaining that it was encouraging the very cultural balkanization that they have feared all along.

Mr. Bush's comments were striking for a president who has embraced Spanish in his political life. Mr. Bush grew up in Midland, Tex., alongside Spanish-speaking children. As a politician who became governor and ran for president aiming to build a broader Republican coalition, he seized every chance to win over the fast-growing Hispanic population.

"He recognized that Texas was rapidly becoming a state that would have more Hispanics and more African-Americans than it would Anglos," said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, who plans to introduce a resolution on Monday "to remind the country" why the national anthem should be always sung in English.

Mr. Bush took aim at Hispanics as an important voting bloc during the last two president campaigns. Mr. Bush has starred in his own Spanish-language advertising, and he was the first president to give his weekly radio address in Spanish. (The Spanish wire service Agencia EFE once said he spoke the language poorly, "but with great confidence.")

Mr. Bush ventured into a little Spanish on Friday, using the Spanish pronunciation for the smugglers known as "coyotes" while outlining the need for stricter border enforcement.

Democrats and Republicans alike said Mr. Bush seemed to be making clear to conservatives — for the grassroots and for those in Congress opposing guest worker and citizenship provisions in the immigration legislation — that there were limits to his support for the pro-immigration agenda. Should the Senate pass immigration legislation this year that creates a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for some workers in the United States illegally — provisions that most conservatives oppose — Mr. Bush would play a main role in working on a deal with the House, which has passed a bill that addresses just border security.

"The president is working hard to try to pass the bill, and he's thrown a bone to the right here," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, a centrist group that focuses on Hispanic issues.

White House officials said Mr. Bush was not being politically calculating and has always believed that new immigrants should embrace the national language and culture.

Mr. Bush made his comments in a wide-ranging session with reporters in which he also said he opposed calls for a windfall-profits tax on oil companies.

    Bush Enters Anthem Fight on Language, NYT, 29.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/29/washington/29bush.html?hp&ex=1146369600&en=de88be2e28ed3412&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush seeks to raise car fuel standards

Thu Apr 27, 2006 9:38 PM ET
Reuters
By Matt Spetalnick

BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) - President Bush called for legislation on Thursday to allow a boost in fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars, as he sought to soothe rising anxiety among Americans about higher oil costs.

Bush proposed no specific figure for increasing mileage standards for cars for the first time in 16 years. But officials said they wanted broad changes in the long-standing method for calculating how far cars should go on a gallon of gasoline.

Environmentalists have long urged a substantial increase in the fuel-economy standards, which they view as one of the most effective means of reducing the U.S. appetite for foreign oil.

Each manufacturers' fleet of passenger cars must average 27.5 miles per gallon.

However, U.S. automakers have warned that higher fuel standards might compromise safety because vehicles would probably have to be lighter. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta echoed a similar view in a letter to congressional leaders requesting formal authority to reform the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard for cars.

Some Democrats and some auto industry sources believe the administration already has the authority to raise CAFE standards and doesn't need congressional action.

Bush likened higher gasoline prices to a tax as he stopped at a fueling station after touring hurricane-hit Biloxi, Mississippi.

He said that the Republican-led Congress was weighing some ideas to ease the pain at the pump, including legislation on the fuel standards.

"I encourage them to give me that authority," Bush said. "It's authority that I use for light trucks. And I intend to use it wisely if Congress would give me that authority."

The administration in March raised fuel standards for popular-selling light trucks, including sport utility vehicles, pickups and minivans.

POLITICAL IMPACT

Gasoline prices, which have vaulted above $3 a gallon and are increasingly pinching consumers budget, are a key concern for Bush, whose approval ratings have been mired in the low to mid-30 percent range.

Bush, in an interview with "NBC Nightly News," said the low poll ratings were partly due to high gasoline prices.

"There is a strong economy, and yet there is a certain unease," Bush said. "I think some of it has to do with gasoline prices," he said, also citing uncertainty in the Middle East due to Iraq and Iran.

"I've been up in the polls, and I've been down in the polls, but I'm going to continue to do what I think is right for the country," Bush told NBC.

His Republican allies worry gasoline prices could put their dominance in Congress at risk in November's midterm elections.

Bush rolled out some initiatives earlier this week such as ordering a probe into price gouging and suspending additions to the U.S. emergency stockpile of oil.

Democrats say Bush's plan falls short and called for measures including suspending the 18 cent per-gallon gasoline tax and eliminating industry tax credits.

Senate Republicans weighed in on Thursday with ideas like giving taxpayers a $100 check and opening an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling. They also called for suspending a retail fuel tax.

In March, the Bush administration announced it would raise fuel economy standards by 1.9 miles per gallon for sport utility vehicles, pickups and vans -- the biggest gas guzzlers -- between 2008 and 2011.

The change for light trucks featured a restructuring of how fuel standards are calculated for the class, something Mineta said in his letter to House and Senate leaders would also be crucial for passenger cars to maintain safety.

General Motors Corp. said in a statement it would work with the administration. "As changes are made, we want to be sure this program is designed in the fairest way possible for all auto manufacturers," company spokeswoman Sherrie Childers Arb said.

Some environmental and consumer advocates have urged that mileage standards go up significantly since many passenger cars, especially foreign-made vehicles, far exceed the current standard.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan, John Crawley and Maureen Lorenzetti)

    Bush seeks to raise car fuel standards, R, 27.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-04-28T013819Z_01_N27173521_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-ENERGY.xml

Bush Takes Steps to Ease Increase in Energy Prices

April 26, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, April 25 — President Bush announced a series of short-term steps on Tuesday intended to ease the rise in energy prices, including a suspension of government purchases to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a relaxation of environmental rules for the formulation of gasoline and investigations into possible price gouging and price fixing.

In addressing energy prices in a speech here, Mr. Bush joined a chorus of lawmakers who have been advocating populist-sounding initiatives to respond to surges in gasoline and crude oil prices and the threat they pose to Republicans in this fall's Congressional elections.

Mr. Bush did not go as far as some members of his party, who are floating the possibility of a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies. But, speaking as the major oil companies prepared to report their quarterly earnings this week, he said he was directing the Justice Department to join with an existing Federal Trade Commission inquiry into possible price manipulation.

Mr. Bush urged oil companies to reinvest their profits in expanding refining capacity and in developing alternative energy sources. And he called for the reversal of relatively small tax breaks and incentives for oil companies engaging in specific types of exploration. Those perks were in an energy bill Mr. Bush signed into law last year.

He also called for an expansion of the tax break consumers get for buying hybrid cars, which combine gasoline and battery power, a move that could benefit two major Japanese-owned manufacturers, Toyota and Honda, which have led the market.

The rise in energy prices has undermined the administration's effort to build a case that its policies have led to economic prosperity and has given Democrats an opening to portray the White House and Congressional Republicans as allies of the oil industry. With Mr. Bush's poll numbers sagging and his party on the defensive over the Iraq war, Republicans have been scrambling to show they are trying to help consumers.

Republican strategists said the anticorporate undertone of the Republican response carried the risk of a backlash from business leaders and free-market conservatives who deplore government intervention. But they said the risk was relatively small at a time when both parties want to promise voters relief.

"I think there are a lot of people in the business community who are saying that to some degree, the oil industry brought some of this criticism on itself," said David Winston, a Republican pollster, noting recent headlines about the $400 million in compensation that Lee R. Raymond received in his last year as chairman of Exxon Mobil.

Oil prices are hovering around $73 dollars a barrel, and consumers are paying more than $3 a gallon for gasoline in places. The sharp price increase in recent weeks has been driven by several factors, including concern about a confrontation with Iran, one of the world's largest oil suppliers.

At various points, Iran has threatened — and withdrawn the threat — to slow production if the United Nations Security Council imposes sanctions against it for its nuclear enrichment program, which the United States says is part of a secret weapons program. Mr. Bush alluded to the issue in his speech, saying for the first time that some countries were playing on what he termed America's "addiction" to oil, adding, "that reduces our influence" in the world.

Mr. Bush said the decision a decade ago by the Clinton administration not to permit oil production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was costing the United States more than one million barrels a day of lost production.

The investigation into possible price manipulation that Mr. Bush said the Federal Trade Commission was conducting began in August 2005, around the time Hurricane Katrina struck. The trade commission said Tuesday that the results of that initial investigation would be announced in May, and that for the past four years it had been reviewing prices in several markets.

Mr. Bush also said he had ordered some short-term steps, mostly involving the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He gave American oil companies more time to pay back emergency loans taken from the reserve after the production disruptions of the last hurricane season. The Energy Department says the reserve has 688 million barrels in hand; it has room for 727 million barrels. The oil company paybacks would amount to a little over two million barrels.

"Our strategic reserve is sufficiently large enough to guard against any major supply disruption over the next few months," Mr. Bush said. "So by deferring deposits until the fall, we'll leave a little more oil on the market."

He added: "Every little bit helps."

Oil experts, though, said that these steps were small ones, and that Mr. Bush's ability to affect gasoline prices was limited.

For the longer term, Mr. Bush said he was asking Congress to repeal $2 billion in tax breaks and incentives in last year's energy bill. White House officials said he had never advocated the incentives for the oil industry.

Mr. Bush suggested expanding the tax break for buying hybrids, which are more expensive than gasoline-powered cars, but which look more attractive to consumers today than they did a year ago. The break diminishes as soon as more than 60,000 units of any individual hybrid model are sold, but on Tuesday, Mr. Bush pressed to eliminate that ceiling. The Toyota Prius is the first model most likely to exceed the current limit.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans accused the Democrats of blocking legislation to increase energy supplies by increasing domestic nuclear power and oil drilling. Democrats said Mr. Bush and Republicans in Congress had failed to address the short-term cost of gas in the energy bill passed last year, and they dismissed the president's call for an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission as a toothless ploy.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said the party planned to introduce amendments about gasoline prices in the pending bill for spending for Iraq. The party's priority, Democrats said, is an amendment proposed by Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, to suspend the federal sales tax on gasoline for 60 days and pay for the shortfall by changing rules to increase the taxes on oil companies.

Many parts of the country, especially in the Northeast, have been experiencing high gasoline prices — and shortages in rare cases — as refiners are scrambling to switch to an ethanol-blended gasoline instead of using MTBE. Refiners have decided to drop MTBE, a popular oxygen additive but one that has been blamed for water pollution.

The rapid shift has created vast logistical challenges for refiners and distributors, mainly because of ethanol shortages and the difficulties linked to transporting it.

The decision announced by Mr. Bush on Tuesday to let the Environmental Protection Agency waive environmental restrictions on gasoline supplies could encourage a smoother transition this summer by allowing imports of lower-grade gasoline from Europe and helping refiners produce more lower-quality gasoline to meet demand.

David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and Jad Mouawad from New York.

    Bush Takes Steps to Ease Increase in Energy Prices, NYT, 26.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/washington/26bush.html?hp&ex=1146024000&en=fdbfac53f2a144fe&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Fox Commentator to Join White House, Officials Say

April 26, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, April 25 — Tony Snow, the Fox News radio and television commentator, has agreed to become the White House press secretary and could be officially named to the post as early as Wednesday, administration officials said on Tuesday.

Unlike the soft-spoken current press secretary, Scott McClellan, who announced his resignation last week, Mr. Snow is something of a showman, having earned his living in a world in which success hinges upon being provocative.

Mr. Snow has even written recent columns critical of Mr. Bush, arguing that his White House had lost its verve and direction in his second term.

A senior administration official said the president chose Mr. Snow, 50, to become one of the most visible faces of the administration because he understood newspapers, radio, television and government, having worked in all four areas.

This official, who was granted anonymity to speak about a major personnel move not yet announced by Mr. Bush, added that the White House was hoping that Mr. Snow would use his television skills to take better advantage of the daily briefings so often televised live on cable news, giving the administration unfiltered time to push its points of the day.

Mr. Snow is also a star in the conservative movement, some of whose members, including him, have been openly critical of the White House in recent months.

Mr. Snow could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

His appointment would come as the new White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, is shuffling the president's top staff as part of an effort to salvage Mr. Bush's second-term agenda. One area on which Mr. Bolten has already focused is Mr. Bush's press operation, which he is trying to make more effective at presenting the president's message, Republicans with ties to the White House have said.

Mr. Snow is the host of "The Tony Snow Show" on radio and "Weekend Live with Tony Snow" on the Fox News Channel; he also had been the host of "Fox News Sunday," one of the five major Sunday morning public affairs programs. Before that, he was a columnist at USA Today and the editorial page editor of The Washington Times.

Mr. Snow took a break from journalism to work as a White House speechwriter for Mr. Bush's father.

His appointment as press secretary has been rumored for more than a week, even before Mr. McClellan's resigned. White House officials had expressed surprise at the rumors, however, and wondered whether the appointment would happen, given Mr. Snow's freewheeling style and some of his commentary.

In a column titled "Thud!" on his radio show Web site, Mr. Snow called the president's domestic policy proposals in his State of the Union address "lackluster" and worried that the president had a dearth of people around him willing to tell him when his ideas were bad. Mr. Snow added, however, that Mr. Bush was "the only figure who counts in American politics."

Late Tuesday, Democrats were already circulating, via e-mail messages, a link to a blog affiliated with the Center for American Progress, which features a list of Mr. Snow's critical comments about the president in his columns.

In a November column, posted on Townhall.com, Mr. Snow wrote of Mr. Bush: "His wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back against the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Wilson. The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment."

In a March column, Mr. Snow wrote, "A Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc." And he derided the new prescription drug benefit that Mr. Bush signed into law.

As press secretary, Mr. Snow would probably have to defend just such a program.

When asked about Mr. Snow's more critical comments, the administration official said, "What better way to pop the bubble that people think there is here."

Senior administration officials consider Mr. Snow to be just the sort of outsider for whom some of their concerned Republican allies have been calling.

Mr. Snow had surgery for colon cancer last year, and he was said to have been waiting for his doctors' approval before signing on as press secretary. He is healthy now, and his physicians carefully monitor his condition.

In the past week, Mr. Snow has also made it clear that he was negotiating for as much access as possible before taking the job. He said in an interview on the Fox News Channel that he was interested in the position because he would be part of "an inner White House circle."

Though White House officials have consistently said that Mr. McClellan has had all the access he wanted, the perception remained among members of both parties that he did not. Either way, the senior administration official who spoke for this article said Mr. Snow would have "walk-in privileges" and an important role in "strategic thinking."

It was unclear when Mr. Snow would start — and even whether the White House would announce his hiring on Wednesday or later in the week. But it seemed likely it would do so before the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday — when Mr. Snow will either be sitting with his Fox News colleagues, or not.

    Fox Commentator to Join White House, Officials Say, NYT, 26.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/washington/26snow.html?hp&ex=1146110400&en=5ec1e2cd720c5d8a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush's approval rating hits new low

Mon Apr 24, 2006 5:07 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's public approval rating has fallen to 32 percent, a new low for his presidency, a CNN poll showed on Monday.

The survey also showed that 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job.

Bush's poll numbers have languished below 40 percent in the last couple of months, hit by growing public opposition to the Iraq war, his support for a now-abandoned plan for a Dubai firm to take over major U.S. port operations and American anger over gas prices now topping $3 a gallon at the pump.

Continuing fallout from the Bush administration's mishandling of the initial response to Hurricane Katrina has also hurt his popularity.

Bush's approval rating as measured by CNN's poll dropped from 36 percent in March. His lowest job performance measure has been 32 percent, in a Fox News poll this month.

Bush has launched a shake-up of his White House staff in an effort to revive his popularity and stave off concerns of fellow Republicans that they could lose control of both houses of Congress in a November midterm election.

Bush's response to the gas crisis has been to warn Americans to expect a tough summer, vow that price gouging will not be tolerated and try to promote energy alternatives that will take years to get to consumers.

    Bush's approval rating hits new low, R, 24.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-04-24T210722Z_01_WAT005409_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-POLL.xml

Energy Politics on Earth Day as Bush Tours California

April 23, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

INDIAN WELLS, Calif., April 22 — President Bush spent an Earth Day marked by record-high gas prices promoting his support for hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars, but Democrats said that the vehicles were years away from reality and that the president needed to do more to relieve sticker shock at the pump.

Such was the state of the political battle over gas prices on Saturday, when Mr. Bush went to West Sacramento to tour the California Fuel Cell Partnership, a consortium of 31 car makers, energy companies and government agencies, and Democrats fired off press releases from Washington attacking the administration's energy plans.

"This nation does not have to choose between a strong economy and a clean environment," Mr. Bush said in remarks at the Fuel Cell Partnership, where he was flanked by two boxy-looking prototype hydrogen cars. "We can have both at the same time."

Cars powered by fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen from the air in a chemical reaction. Mr. Bush said there were about 100 hydrogen cars on California roads, but as of late last year, only one was being tested by consumers, the Spallino family of Redondo Beach, Calif., who had an experimental Honda FCX worth about $1 million.

"I strongly believe hydrogen is the fuel of the future," Mr. Bush said, adding that he thought that today's children would take their driving tests in hydrogen-powered cars.

Mr. Bush's remarks came as part of an effort to appear proactive about the problem of high gas prices, one that Democrats are increasingly using against the Republicans in this midterm election year.

Although the president declared in his State of the Union address that "America is addicted to oil" and then presented a series of alternative energy proposals, Democrats have said the plans are not adequate. Mr. Bush, they say, should address consumption more aggressively and not oppose higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars.

In a Democratic response to Mr. Bush, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said the president needed to take "more dramatic steps," including conservation and raising the mileage standard for all passenger vehicles to at least 40 miles per gallon.

"The crisis is coming," Mr. Nelson said. "And so America must act now, before soaring prices and a dependence on foreign oil puts a chokehold on our economy and military."

Mr. Bush's energy proposals for the fiscal year that begins in October call for $289 million for hydrogen fuel technology, up from $53 million this year; $54 million for coal plants that would capture the carbon dioxide they produce; $148 million for solar power, up from $65 million this year; $44 million for wind power, up $5 million from this year; and $150 million for ethanol from cellulose, up $59 million from this year.

The General Motors Corporation and the Department of Energy have committed $44 million to a fuel cell demonstration project, with G.M. pledging to put 40 fuel cell vehicles on the road in New York, Washington, California and Michigan by 2009. The department has also signed fuel cell development agreements with the Ford Motor Company, DaimlerChrysler and the Hyundai Motor Company as part of a broader, five-year, $1.2 billion hydrogen initiative announced by Mr. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address.

Mr. Bush began Earth Day with a bike ride through a foggy redwood forest in the Napa Valley wine country, where he had spent the night after a dinner on the Stanford University campus.

Mr. Bush headed later in the day to a fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee in Indian Wells, where he raised $2 million, and was to remain overnight on Sunday in Rancho Mirage.

    Energy Politics on Earth Day as Bush Tours California, NYT, 23.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/washington/23bush.html

Rove Is Giving Up Daily Policy Post to Focus on Vote

April 20, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, April 19 — The overhaul of the White House staff intensified on Wednesday as Karl Rove, one of the president's most powerful and feared advisers, gave up day-to-day control over the administration's domestic policy to concentrate on the midterm elections. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said he was stepping down.

The departure of Mr. McClellan gives President Bush a chance to put a new public face on the White House at a time when it is beset by problems. But Mr. Rove's changed status is the more telling sign of the extent of the shake-up directed by Mr. Bush and his new chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten.

Mr. Rove has been at Mr. Bush's side since Mr. Bush entered politics, and for years his influence has been unquestioned. The decision to take away his daily control over the White House's policy-making apparatus is the first time his role has shrunk, and it is a stark reversal from the heady aftermath of Mr. Bush's 2004 re-election victory, when Mr. Rove's portfolio was expanded to give him formal control over policy.

In a telephone interview Wednesday night, Mr. Rove brushed aside suggestions that the change was a diminishment of his role.

"It is something different," he said.

"I've got a new boss," he continued, a boss "who says I want you to do more of this and less of that."

Mr. Rove will retain his title as a deputy chief of staff, as well as his catch-all designation as Mr. Bush's senior adviser.

He said he would continue to oversee broad policy issues. "The president and the new chief of staff said they wanted me focused on the big strategic issues facing the administration," he said.

Joel D. Kaplan, now the deputy White House budget director, will assume Mr. Rove's duties as the manager of policy development at the White House and will take the title deputy chief of staff for policy.

The change in Mr. Rove's responsibilities was at a minimum a signal that the White House was serious about reorganizing itself to get Mr. Bush's presidency back on track, and was widely interpreted in Washington as a step down in stature for Mr. Rove and an acknowledgment of policy failures in the last year.

Mr. Rove had taken the lead on what was supposed to be the main domestic policy initiative of the second Bush term, the president's proposal to remake the Social Security system. The effort to sell the plan to a skeptical Congress and voters flopped.

Similarly, Mr. Rove had trouble driving forward another of Mr. Bush's priorities, an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. He also came under criticism for the White House's slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

At the same time, Republicans on Capitol Hill have grown increasingly unhappy about Mr. Rove's dual political and policy roles. Mr. Rove was seen as spread far too thin, and was also distracted by the investigation into his role in the C.I.A. leak case.

The investigation has lingered far longer than White House officials expected, and Mr. Rove has not been cleared of wrongdoing, although his lawyer has said he is confident that he will be.

"Karl Rove is a great guy in terms of developing issues for a campaign, but he's not done well on advocating policy in a governance setting," said James A. Thurber, the director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at the School of Public Affairs at American University. "The job is diminished, but he probably doesn't mind that. He's a racehorse in a campaign."

Republicans close to the White House and West Wing officials cast the change in Mr. Rove's status in a positive light, much like the return of a star pitcher to the mound, and said he was desperately needed to focus on the midterm elections that Republicans increasingly fear could result in major losses for their party.

"We're returning to the structure we had at the beginning of the first term," said Nicolle Wallace, the White House communications director. "All that changes is that the management of the day-to-day policy process will be put under Joel. Karl will keep the high-yield strategic role that he's always had."

Mr. McClellan told reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday morning that Mr. Rove would continue to have his security clearance, but that his desk could move in the West Wing should Mr. Bolten decide to reorder the physical layout of the staff offices. Mr. Rove had moved into an office down the hall from the Oval Office last year after occupying a space on the second floor during the first term.

Other Republicans said that the change was largely cosmetic, and that Mr. Rove would continue to shape major domestic policy as he saw fit.

"The notion that this is a demotion just doesn't ring true to me," said Vin Weber, a former member of the House and a lobbyist who is close to the White House. "He's been the guy who wrote his own job description pretty much. I think that is still more true than less true."

Democrats applauded the change even as they used it as reason to skewer the White House's priorities.

"The White House has never separated politics from policy and that's been one of the reasons for its undoing," Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement. "Late is better than never, but the key for the White House will be getting a new person in charge of policy independent from Karl Rove who understands that policy is not simply politics."

Other Democrats seized on the change as an opportunity to call once again for Mr. Rove's resignation.

Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement that while "it is not surprising that Karl Rove was demoted this morning," Mr. Rove's involvement in the C.I.A. leak case still gave the president "abundant reason" to fire him.

Mr. McClellan announced his resignation at the side of Mr. Bush on the White House lawn, but through sometimes emotional remarks he did not say what he would be doing or who would succeed him. It was unclear if Mr. McClellan had acted on his own or had been encouraged to leave after his two years and nine months as Mr. Bush's chief spokesman.

"The White House is going through a period of transition," Mr. McClellan said. "Change can be helpful, and this is a good time and good position to help bring about change. I am ready to move on. I've been in this position a long time, and my wife and I are excited about beginning the next chapter in our life together."

White House officials have talked to Tony Snow, a commentator for Fox News and a former speechwriter for the president's father, about possibly succeeding Mr. McClellan.

Other speculation has focused on Victoria Clarke, the former Pentagon spokeswoman, and Rob Nichols, the former spokesman for the Treasury Department. Ms. Clarke said Wednesday afternoon that she was not interested in the job.

Mr. Bolten, who has been given a free hand by Mr. Bush to make changes, has told associates he wants to change the White House communications operation and is interested in press officers who have longtime contacts and ties with reporters in Washington. Mr. McClellan, who grew up in Texas politics, has been working for Mr. Bush since Mr. Bush first ran for president.

Mr. McClellan, who has engaged in heated exchanges with reporters at numerous televised briefings in recent months, said he told Mr. Bolten at the end of last week that he would step down and then informed the president of his decision on Monday morning.

"I didn't need much encouragement to make this decision, even though you all kept tempting me," he said.

Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting from Tuskegee, Ala., for this article.

    Rove Is Giving Up Daily Policy Post to Focus on Vote, NYT, 20.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/washington/20bush.html?hp&ex=1145592000&en=b49a861d2013ce49&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Defying Senators, Bush Renames 2 Social Security Public Trustees

April 20, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, April 19 — President Bush reappointed the two public representatives on the board of trustees for Social Security and Medicare on Wednesday, defying Senate leaders of both parties.

The appointments clear the way for the Bush administration to issue its annual reports on the financial condition of the programs, which together account for more than one-third of all federal spending.

The White House announced that Mr. Bush had granted "recess appointments" to the public trustees, John L. Palmer, former dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, and Thomas R. Saving, an economist at Texas A&M.

Under the Constitution, a president can "fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate." Mr. Palmer, a Democrat, and Mr. Saving, a Republican, were first appointed by President Bill Clinton in 2000. They can now serve until the end of the next session of the Senate, in late 2007.

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and its senior Democrat, Max Baucus of Montana, had urged Mr. Bush to find other candidates. They did not criticize Mr. Palmer or Mr. Saving, but said they wanted fresh perspectives on Social Security and Medicare.

Senators Grassley and Baucus said they were disappointed with Mr. Bush's action and still hoped that he would find other candidates.

"Now that the impasse is cleared," Mr. Grassley said, "I hope the White House will nominate new people so we can return to the goal of having fresh faces on the board."

Mr. Baucus said Mr. Bush had chosen to "ride roughshod" over the Senate.

"The White House has failed to consult in good faith with Congress on new nominees for these positions," Mr. Baucus said. "Public trustees for Social Security and Medicare have never served more than one term. It is vital to have new blood and fresh thinking for these programs so critical to all Americans."

The public trustees are supposed to make sure that the assets of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are properly managed. They also try to ensure that the administration's annual reports to Congress are as reliable and objective as possible. Lawmakers use data from those reports in debates on the programs.

Four administration officials are also trustees. Although the public trustees come from different parties, they usually work together and issue joint statements.

In their next reports, the trustees will provide information to help answer such questions as is the long-term financial outlook for Social Security as dire as Mr. Bush says? How costly is the new prescription drug benefit? Are these programs sustainable in their current form?

    Defying Senators, Bush Renames 2 Social Security Public Trustees, NYT, 20.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/washington/20appoint.html

Bush won't rule out nuclear strike on Iran

Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:16 AM ET
Reuters
By Edmund Blair

TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Bush refused on Tuesday to rule out nuclear strikes against Iran if diplomacy fails to curb the Islamic Republic's atomic ambitions.

Iran, which says its nuclear programme is purely peaceful, told world powers it would pursue atomic technology, whatever they decide at a meeting in Moscow later in the day.

Bush said in Washington he would discuss Iran's nuclear activities with China's President Hu Jintao this week and avoided ruling out nuclear retaliation if diplomatic efforts fail.

Asked if options included planning for a nuclear strike, Bush replied: "All options are on the table. We want to solve this issue diplomatically and we're working hard to do so."

Speculation about a U.S. attack has mounted since a report in New Yorker magazine said this month that Washington was mulling the option of using tactical nuclear weapons to knock out Iran's subterranean nuclear sites.

The United States, which accuses Iran of seeking atom bombs, was expected to push for targeted sanctions against Tehran when it meets the U.N. Security Council's other permanent members -- Britain, France, China and Russia -- plus Germany in Moscow.

Russia and China oppose sanctions and the use of force.

Deputy foreign ministers from the six nations are meeting ahead of an end-April deadline for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report on whether Iran is complying with U.N. demands that it halt uranium enrichment.

"I recommend that they do not make hasty decisions, be prudent and study their path in the past. Any time they have pressured Iran they have got adverse results," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.

"Whatever the result of this meeting might be, Iran will not abandon its rights (to nuclear technology)," he added later.

Iran defied U.N. demands by declaring last week it had enriched uranium to a level used in power stations and was aiming for industrial-scale production, ratcheting up tensions and sending oil prices to record highs above $72 a barrel.

The United States, which already enforces its own sweeping sanctions on Iran, wants the Security Council to be ready to take strong diplomatic action, including so-called targeted measures such as a freeze on assets and visa curbs.

Washington says it does not want to embargo Iran's oil and gas industries to avoid creating hardship for the Iranian people. Iran is the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter.

CHINA, RUSSIA OPPOSE SANCTIONS

China, which sent an envoy to Iran on Friday to try to defuse the standoff, repeated a call for a negotiated solution.

"We hope all sides will maintain restraint and flexibility," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing.

Russia restated its opposition to punitive action. "We are convinced that neither the sanctions route nor the use of force route will lead to a solution of this problem," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Israel's Jerusalem Post the United States probably could not destroy Iran's nuclear program but could attempt to set it back by strikes as a last resort.

"I think the only justifiable use of military power would be an attempt to deter the development of their nuclear program if we felt there was no other way to do it," he said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at an annual military parade, said the army was ready to defend the nation.

"It will cut off the hands of any aggressors and will make any aggressor regret it," Ahmadinejad declared.

In Kuwait, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said he doubted the Americans would use force. "It is unlikely that they would enter into such a perilous situation from which they cannot come out."

Iran says it will not drop its right to enrich uranium for peaceful use but that it will work with the IAEA.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog says it has been unable to verify that Iran's nuclear program is purely civilian, but has found no hard proof of efforts to build atomic weapons.

IAEA inspectors are due in Iran on Friday to visit nuclear sites, including one at Natanz where Iran says it has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent, the level used in nuclear power plants.

IRNA news agency said Olli Heinonen, ElBaradei's deputy for safeguards issues, would lead the team. One diplomat said his presence suggested Iran might provide some missing information.

Experts say it would take Iran years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb from its current 164 centrifuges. But Iran says it will to install 3,000 centrifuges, which could make enough material for a warhead in one year.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran, Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow, Mark Heinrich in Vienna)

    Bush won't rule out nuclear strike on Iran, R, 18.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-18T151553Z_01_L17370115_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN.xml&src=cms

Rumsfeld Gets Robust Defense From President

April 15, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, April 14 — President Bush strongly endorsed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday, in an effort to quell widening criticism from retired generals who have urged Mr. Rumsfeld to resign.

"Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period," the president's statement read. "He has my full support and deepest appreciation."

The statement, issued as Mr. Bush interrupted a family holiday at Camp David, was part of a strong effort by the White House to fend off criticism of the handling of the war that has come from six retired generals, several of whom were involved in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The generals are weighing in as polls show support for the war waning significantly in an election year.

Mr. Bush's statement was followed hours later by supportive comments from Gen. Richard B. Myers, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the retired commander of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both appeared on cable news programs, and General Myers pointedly criticized former colleagues for publicly questioning civilian leadership.

Mr. Rumsfeld appeared Friday on an Al Arabiya television broadcast and said, "Out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round."

It was not clear how far the counterattack by Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld might go to quiet the calls from the generals or to mollify members of Congress who have begun citing the retired officers' complaints as validation of their own critiques of the war.

A request for comment from the office of Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, drew only an equivocal response. "Senator Warner believes that the decision of whether to keep Secretary Rumsfeld is up to the president," said a spokesman for Mr. Warner, John Ullyot.

Senator Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat who is on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he expected more retired officers to speak out against Mr. Rumsfeld.

"Does this chorus become more pronounced? I think that might happen," Mr. Reed said.

The White House has generally tried to avoid commenting on what it refers to as "personnel matters." But Friday was only one of several occasions during Mr. Bush's presidency in which he has gone out of his way to voice support for his defense secretary, who has sparred with segments of the Pentagon establishment virtually from the moment he took office.

In defending Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush seemed to have been asserting his standing as commander in chief, sending a signal to the generals that criticizing the defense secretary is the equivalent of criticizing his own stewardship of the war. Administration officials said Mr. Bush took the strong move of issuing the statement from Camp David on Good Friday because he was concerned that the retired generals were sending mixed messages to the battlefield.

Associates of Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush said critics would be mistaken to believe that Mr. Rumsfeld would resign in reaction to external pressure, noting that both men had only hardened their positions in the face of vocal opposition in the past.

A senior White House official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about a highly charged political issue, described Mr. Bush as being "very proactive" in deciding to make a statement, saying that he was prompted to act because he recognized that the prominent backgrounds of the retired generals now leveling the criticism had potentially added heft to their comments.

The official said Mr. Bush called Mr. Rumsfeld about 10 a.m. from Camp David — where the president is with his family, including his parents — telling him of his decision and affirming his support yet again.

The conversation represented familiar ground for the two. Criticism became so heated during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq during the 2004 presidential election that Mr. Rumsfeld twice offered his resignation, he has said.

Mr. Bush rejected the offers and made a public show of support in June 2004 by telling Mr. Rumsfeld before a group of reporters, "You are a strong secretary of defense, and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude." Military officials have said that Mr. Rumsfeld, 73, has not repeated that offer to resign in response to the retired generals' criticisms.

White House officials again made a concerted effort to show support for Mr. Rumsfeld in December 2004, after Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said they had no confidence in Mr. Rumsfeld.

Those comments were a blow to the administration because they came from respected members of the president's own party, as opposed to liberal political groups like MoveOn.org, or Democrats, for that matter. But the retired generals now stepping forward represent a whole new class of critic.

Far from being daunted, one of them, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq as recently as 2004, went further in his criticisms during a telephone interview on Friday. He said the number of forces that went into Iraq was insufficient for the ultimate task and said of Mr. Rumsfeld, "His arrogance is what will cause us to fail in the future."

But late Friday new allies took to cable news to defend the administration.

On CNN, General Myers said he regretted that the retired generals were speaking out. "My whole perception of this is that it's bad for the military, it's bad for civil-military relations, and it's potentially very bad for the country, because what we are hearing and what we are seeing is not the role the military plays in our society," he said.

General Franks said on MSNBC that Mr. Rumsfeld was a "pretty successful secretary of defense" whose managerial style ruffled feathers.

Administration officials seemed to be hoping that the debate could move to one between generals and cease to be one involving the White House, which has seemed uncomfortable publicly taking on military brass.

But the senior administration official said the president was not deaf to complaints about Mr. Rumsfeld. "He is fully cognizant of the controversy that surrounds Secretary Rumsfeld's tenure," the official said. "But that often happens when you are tasked with doing very difficult things."

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.

    Rumsfeld Gets Robust Defense From President, NYT, 15.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/washington/15rumsfeld.html?hp&ex=1145160000&en=cceef4ccbbf294e9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

President Bush Expresses Full Support, Appreciation for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

The White House
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 14, 2006

Earlier today I spoke with Don Rumsfeld about ongoing military operations in the Global War on Terror. I reiterated my strong support for his leadership during this historic and challenging time for our Nation.

The Department of Defense has been tasked with many difficult missions. Upon assuming office, I asked Don to transform the largest department in our government. That kind of change is hard, but our Nation must have a military that is fully prepared to confront the dangerous threats of the 21st Century. Don and our military commanders have also been tasked to take the fight to the enemy abroad on multiple fronts.

I have seen first-hand how Don relies upon our military commanders in the field and at the Pentagon to make decisions about how best to complete these missions. Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation.

    President Bush Expresses Full Support, Appreciation for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, The White House, 14.4.2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060414.html

President Bush's Tax Returns Are Made Public

April 15, 2006
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, April 14 — The president and Laura Bush reported adjusted gross income of $735,180 for last year and paid federal income taxes of $187,768, slightly less than in 2004, according to a copy of the couple's 2005 return released Friday by the White House.

The tax return listed as income the president's salary of about $400,000 and proceeds from investment trusts that hold the couple's assets. They paid $207,307 in taxes in 2004 on income of $784,219.

Their 2005 return was made public along with that of Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, who reported that their taxes were $529,636. The Cheneys' adjusted gross income was $8.82 million, but most of it was not taxable: $6.87 million was proceeds from stock options that the couple had set aside for charity and that were distributed last year, plus charitable contributions that came from royalties on books written by Mrs. Cheney.

As a result, the Cheneys' taxable income was $1.96 million. In a statement, the White House said that over the course of the year, the couple paid $2.5 million in taxes through withholding and estimated tax payments, in part to deal with the exercise of the stock options. Given that their 2005 taxes are a little over half a million dollars, they are due a refund of about $1.9 million, the statement said.

The White House emphasized that the Cheneys had received no personal financial benefit from the charitable donations. "The transactions were tax-neutral to the Cheneys," it said, adding that the large tax refund would return them "to a neutral position of no personal financial benefit or financial detriment resulting" from the gifts.

The White House said the stock options had been granted to the Cheneys by the Halliburton Company, Mr. Cheney's former employer, and from the couple's work on the boards of other companies.

The money, it said, was designated for three charities: the University of Wyoming, the Cardiothoracic Institute of George Washington University, and Capital Partners for Education, a group that works with low-income high school students in Washington.

The Bushes said they contributed $75,560 to churches and other tax-exempt organizations in 2005, about $2,200 less than the year before, and that the recipients last year included the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army's disaster relief funds for the United States and Pakistan. The 2005 donations amounted to 10.3 percent of the couple's income.

    President Bush's Tax Returns Are Made Public, NYT, 15.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/washington/15bush.html

Bush urged to secure Chinese dissident's release

Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:41 AM ET
Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - More than 100 U.S. congressmen have urged President George W. Bush to help secure the release of a jailed Chinese democracy campaigner when Chinese President Hu Jintao visits Washington next week.

A Chinese court jailed Yang Jianli, president of the Boston-based Foundation for China in the 21st Century, for five years in 2002, accusing him of spying for Taiwan and illegal entry.

"We respectfully ask that you make the case to President Hu that his country would have nothing to lose by releasing Dr Yang at this point," the 119 congressmen said in a letter to Bush made available to reporters on Tuesday, one day after it was sent.

"In fact (China has) much to gain with regard to the positive effect it would have on the bilateral strategic partnership between our two countries," read the letter, signed by Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, and Representatives Barney Frank, Tom Lantos, Christopher Smith and Michael Capuano.

Bush raised Yang's case when he met Hu in New York last September. The U.S. embassy in Beijing has raised Yang's case with Chinese officials at least 60 times.

The U.S. Senate and House have unanimously passed resolutions calling for Yang's release and U.S. senators have written to Hu urging him to free him.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said on Tuesday Yang's case would be handled according to the law.

"China has always stood for human rights dialogue with other nations, including the United States, on an equal, two-way footing with mutual respect," Liu told a regular news conference.

Yang, who has doctorates from the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, had lived in the United States for more than a decade but opted not to take U.S. citizenship.

He was recently barred from attending his father's funeral in Jinan, in eastern China. A family member and rights groups said he had been abused by Chinese prison guards and suffered a minor stroke, but requests for medical parole were rejected.

China often releases dissidents ahead of high-level Sino-U.S. exchanges.

Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman from the restive, predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang in China's northwest, was paroled and exiled to the United States in March 2005, days before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Beijing.

    Bush urged to secure Chinese dissident's release, R, 11.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-04-11T094141Z_01_PEK5521_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-CHINA-USA.xml

White House Memo

With One Filing, Prosecutor Puts Bush in Spotlight

April 11, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, April 10 — From the early days of the C.I.A. leak investigation in 2003, the Bush White House has insisted there was no effort to discredit Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration's case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

But now White House officials, and specifically President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor's court filing in the case that asserts there was "a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House," to undermine Mr. Wilson.

The new assertions by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, have put administration officials on the spot in a way they have not been for months, as attention in the leak case seems to be shifting away from the White House to the pretrial procedural skirmishing in the perjury and obstruction charges against Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.

Mr. Fitzgerald's filing talks not of an effort to level with Americans but of "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson." It concludes, "It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson.' "

With more filings expected from Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor's work has the potential to keep the focus on Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney at a time when the president is struggling with his lowest approval ratings since he took office.

Even on Monday, Mr. Bush found himself in an uncomfortable spot during an appearance at a Johns Hopkins University campus in Washington, when a student asked him to address Mr. Fitzgerald's assertion that the White House was seeking to retaliate against Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Bush stumbled as he began his response before settling on an answer that sidestepped the question. He said he had ordered the formal declassification of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in July 2003 because "it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches" about Iraq's efforts to reconstitute its weapons program.

Mr. Bush said nothing about the earlier, informal authorization that Mr. Fitzgerald's court filing revealed. The prosecutor described testimony from Mr. Libby, who said Mr. Bush had told Mr. Cheney that it was permissible to reveal some information from the intelligence estimate, which described Mr. Hussein's efforts to acquire uranium.

But on Monday, Mr. Bush was not talking about that. "You're just going to have to let Mr. Fitzgerald complete his case, and I hope you understand that," Mr. Bush said. "It's a serious legal matter that we've got to be careful in making public statements about it."

Every prosecutor strives not just to prove a case, but also to tell a compelling story. It is now clear that Mr. Fitzgerald's account of what was happening in the White House in the summer of 2003 is very different from the Bush administration's narrative, which suggested that Mr. Wilson was seen as a minor figure whose criticisms could be answered by disclosing the underlying intelligence upon which Mr. Bush relied.

It turned out that much of the information about Mr. Hussein's search for uranium was questionable at best, and that it became the subject of dispute almost as soon as it was included in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

The answer to the question of whose recounting of events is correct — Mr. Bush's or Mr. Fitzgerald's — may not be known for months or years, if ever. But it seems there will be more clues, including some about the conversations between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Fitzgerald said he was preparing to turn over to Mr. Libby 1,400 pages of handwritten notes — some presumably in Mr. Libby's own hand — that could shed light on two very different efforts at getting out the White House story.

One effort — the July 18 declassification of the major conclusions of the intelligence estimate — was taking place in public, while another, Mr. Fitzgerald argues, was happening in secret, with only Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby involved.

Last week's court filing has already led the White House to acknowledge, over the weekend, that Mr. Bush ordered the selective disclosure of parts of the intelligence estimate sometime in late June or early July. But administration officials insist that Mr. Bush played a somewhat passive role and did so without selecting Mr. Libby, or anyone else, to tell the story piecemeal to a small number of reporters.

But in one of those odd twists in the unpredictable world of news leaks, neither of the reporters Mr. Libby met, Bob Woodward of The Washington Post or Judith Miller, then of The New York Times, reported a word of it under their own bylines. In fact, other reporters working on the story were talking to senior officials who were warning that the uranium information in the intelligence estimate was dubious at best.

Mr. Fitzgerald did not identify who took part in the White House effort to argue otherwise, but the evidence he has cited so far shows that Mr. Cheney's office was the epicenter of concern about Mr. Wilson, the former ambassador sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to determine what deal, if any, Mr. Hussein had struck there.

Throughout the spring and early summer of 2003, Mr. Fitzgerald concluded, the former ambassador had become an irritant to the administration, raising doubts about the truthfulness of assertions — made publicly by Mr. Bush in his State of the Union address in January of that year — that Iraq might have sought uranium in Africa to further its nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Wilson's criticisms culminated in a July 6, 2003, Op-Ed article in The Times in which he voiced the same doubts for the first time on the record. He cited as his evidence his 2002 trip to Niger, instigated, he said, because of questions raised by Mr. Cheney's office.

Mr. Wilson's article, Mr. Fitzgerald said in the filing, "was viewed in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."

Mr. Fitzgerald suggested that the White House effort was a "plan" to undermine Mr. Wilson.

"Disclosing the belief that Mr. Wilson's wife sent him on the Niger trip was one way for defendant to contradict the assertion that the vice president had done so, while at the same time undercutting Mr. Wilson's credibility if Mr. Wilson were perceived to have received the assignment on account of nepotism," Mr. Fitzgerald's filing said.

    With One Filing, Prosecutor Puts Bush in Spotlight, NYT, 11.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/washington/11leak.html?hp&ex=1144814400&en=ac4fcddd3dd28b1e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Insists on Diplomacy in Confronting a Nuclear Iran

April 11, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, April 10 — President Bush said Monday that he remained committed to using diplomacy to block Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, his first public comments addressing recent speculation that the United States was weighing military action to do so.

The president, taking questions from an audience at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, dismissed reports published over the weekend that described military planning for attacks against Iran, saying they contained "wild speculation." Reports in The Washington Post and The New Yorker magazine, outlining military plans, said the United States had not ruled out using nuclear weapons against underground nuclear sites in Iran.

"The doctrine of prevention is to work together to prevent the Iranians from having a nuclear weapon," Mr. Bush said after being asked whether the United States would allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. "I know here in Washington prevention means force; it doesn't mean force, necessarily. In this case, it means diplomacy."

Mr. Bush said the United States continued to work with Britain, Germany, France and Russia in finding diplomatic solutions that would ensure that the Iranians did not acquire even the research capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

"One of the decisions I made early on was to have a multinational approach to sending messages, clear messages, to the Iranians, that if they want to be a part of the — an accepted nation in the world, that they must give up their nuclear weapons ambitions," he said. "And we're making pretty good progress."

Mr. Bush's comments came during a question and answer session with students, faculty members and graduates at the Hopkins school who had gathered to hear him speak about national security and the war on Iraq, part of a series of his speeches aimed in part at buoying support for the war.

Saying "we have learned from our mistakes," Mr. Bush urged elected Iraqi leaders to stop squabbling and form a government, reflecting the administration's frustration with the halting political progress in Iraq.

"Democracy requires strong leadership, and now is the time for Iraqis to step up and show the leadership," he said. "The terrorists and insurgents thrive in a political vacuum, and the delay in forming a government is creating a vacuum that the terrorists and insurgents are working to exploit."

He also said: "The Iraqi people have a right to expect it, and so do the American people. Americans have made great sacrifices to help Iraq get to this point; Iraqi voters risked their lives to go to the polls."

But by Monday morning the reports of United States planning for military action in Iran had already opened up another war-related public relations front for the administration.

After Mr. Bush spoke, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, also emphasized diplomacy with Iran, reiterating a recent statement from the United Nations Security Council calling on Iran to suspend its uranium-enrichment activities. The Council has asked the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency to evaluate Iran's compliance by the end of this month, at which point the Council is to re-evaluate its options.

"The president has made it very clear that we're working with the international community to find a diplomatic solution when it comes to the Iranian regime and its pursuit of nuclear weapons," Mr. McClellan said.

    Bush Insists on Diplomacy in Confronting a Nuclear Iran, NYT, 11.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/world/middleeast/11prexy.html

THE IRAN PLANS

Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?

Posted 2006-04-10
Issue of 2006-04-17
The New Yorker
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

American and European intelligence agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or military action is the best way to prevent it. Iran insists that its research is for peaceful use only, in keeping with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that it will not be delayed or deterred.

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

The rationale for regime change was articulated in early March by Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and who has been a supporter of President Bush. “So long as Iran has an Islamic republic, it will have a nuclear-weapons program, at least clandestinely,” Clawson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2nd. “The key issue, therefore, is: How long will the present Iranian regime last?”

When I spoke to Clawson, he emphasized that “this Administration is putting a lot of effort into diplomacy.” However, he added, Iran had no choice other than to accede to America’s demands or face a military attack. Clawson said that he fears that Ahmadinejad “sees the West as wimps and thinks we will eventually cave in. We have to be ready to deal with Iran if the crisis escalates.” Clawson said that he would prefer to rely on sabotage and other clandestine activities, such as “industrial accidents.” But, he said, it would be prudent to prepare for a wider war, “given the way the Iranians are acting. This is not like planning to invade Quebec.”

One military planner told me that White House criticisms of Iran and the high tempo of planning and clandestine activities amount to a campaign of “coercion” aimed at Iran. “You have to be ready to go, and we’ll see how they respond,” the officer said. “You have to really show a threat in order to get Ahmadinejad to back down.” He added, “People think Bush has been focussed on Saddam Hussein since 9/11,” but, “in my view, if you had to name one nation that was his focus all the way along, it was Iran.” (In response to detailed requests for comment, the White House said that it would not comment on military planning but added, “As the President has indicated, we are pursuing a diplomatic solution”; the Defense Department also said that Iran was being dealt with through “diplomatic channels” but wouldn’t elaborate on that; the C.I.A. said that there were “inaccuracies” in this account but would not specify them.)

“This is much more than a nuclear issue,” one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. “That’s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”

A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. “This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war,” he said. The danger, he said, was that “it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability.” A military conflict that destabilized the region could also increase the risk of terror: “Hezbollah comes into play,” the adviser said, referring to the terror group that is considered one of the world’s most successful, and which is now a Lebanese political party with strong ties to Iran. “And here comes Al Qaeda.”

In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat. A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content with his colleagues, told me that there had been “no formal briefings,” because “they’re reluctant to brief the minority. They’re doing the Senate, somewhat selectively.”

The House member said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions—rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing—since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars.

Last month, in a paper given at a conference on Middle East security in Berlin, Colonel Sam Gardiner, a military analyst who taught at the National War College before retiring from the Air Force, in 1987, provided an estimate of what would be needed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Working from satellite photographs of the known facilities, Gardiner estimated that at least four hundred targets would have to be hit. He added:

I don’t think a U.S. military planner would want to stop there. Iran probably has two chemical-production plants. We would hit those. We would want to hit the medium-range ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer to Iraq. There are fourteen airfields with sheltered aircraft. . . . We’d want to get rid of that threat. We would want to hit the assets that could be used to threaten Gulf shipping. That means targeting the cruise-missile sites and the Iranian diesel submarines. . . . Some of the facilities may be too difficult to target even with penetrating weapons. The U.S. will have to use Special Operations units.


One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface. That number of centrifuges could provide enough enriched uranium for about twenty nuclear warheads a year. (Iran has acknowledged that it initially kept the existence of its enrichment program hidden from I.A.E.A. inspectors, but claims that none of its current activity is barred by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.) The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete.

There is a Cold War precedent for targeting deep underground bunkers with nuclear weapons. In the early nineteen-eighties, the American intelligence community watched as the Soviet government began digging a huge underground complex outside Moscow. Analysts concluded that the underground facility was designed for “continuity of government”—for the political and military leadership to survive a nuclear war. (There are similar facilities, in Virginia and Pennsylvania, for the American leadership.) The Soviet facility still exists, and much of what the U.S. knows about it remains classified. “The ‘tell’ ”—the giveaway—“was the ventilator shafts, some of which were disguised,” the former senior intelligence official told me. At the time, he said, it was determined that “only nukes” could destroy the bunker. He added that some American intelligence analysts believe that the Russians helped the Iranians design their underground facility. “We see a similarity of design,” specifically in the ventilator shafts, he said.

A former high-level Defense Department official told me that, in his view, even limited bombing would allow the U.S. to “go in there and do enough damage to slow down the nuclear infrastructure—it’s feasible.” The former defense official said, “The Iranians don’t have friends, and we can tell them that, if necessary, we’ll keep knocking back their infrastructure. The United States should act like we’re ready to go.” He added, “We don’t have to knock down all of their air defenses. Our stealth bombers and standoff missiles really work, and we can blow fixed things up. We can do things on the ground, too, but it’s difficult and very dangerous—put bad stuff in ventilator shafts and put them to sleep.”

But those who are familiar with the Soviet bunker, according to the former senior intelligence official, “say ‘No way.’ You’ve got to know what’s underneath—to know which ventilator feeds people, or diesel generators, or which are false. And there’s a lot that we don’t know.” The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” the former senior intelligence official said. “ ‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”

He went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout—we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out”—remove the nuclear option—“they’re shouted down.”

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has to be stopped.” He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to high levels.” The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.”

The adviser added, however, that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in such situations has gained support from the Defense Science Board, an advisory panel whose members are selected by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “They’re telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 with more blast and less radiation,” he said.

The chairman of the Defense Science Board is William Schneider, Jr., an Under-Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration. In January, 2001, as President Bush prepared to take office, Schneider served on an ad-hoc panel on nuclear forces sponsored by the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. The panel’s report recommended treating tactical nuclear weapons as an essential part of the U.S. arsenal and noted their suitability “for those occasions when the certain and prompt destruction of high priority targets is essential and beyond the promise of conventional weapons.” Several signers of the report are now prominent members of the Bush Administration, including Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

The Pentagon adviser questioned the value of air strikes. “The Iranians have distributed their nuclear activity very well, and we have no clue where some of the key stuff is. It could even be out of the country,” he said. He warned, as did many others, that bombing Iran could provoke “a chain reaction” of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world: “What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?”



With or without the nuclear option, the list of targets may inevitably expand. One recently retired high-level Bush Administration official, who is also an expert on war planning, told me that he would have vigorously argued against an air attack on Iran, because “Iran is a much tougher target” than Iraq. But, he added, “If you’re going to do any bombing to stop the nukes, you might as well improve your lie across the board. Maybe hit some training camps, and clear up a lot of other problems.”

The Pentagon adviser said that, in the event of an attack, the Air Force intended to strike many hundreds of targets in Iran but that “ninety-nine per cent of them have nothing to do with proliferation. There are people who believe it’s the way to operate”—that the Administration can achieve its policy goals in Iran with a bombing campaign, an idea that has been supported by neoconservatives.

If the order were to be given for an attack, the American combat troops now operating in Iran would be in position to mark the critical targets with laser beams, to insure bombing accuracy and to minimize civilian casualties. As of early winter, I was told by the government consultant with close ties to civilians in the Pentagon, the units were also working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast. The troops “are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds,” the consultant said. One goal is to get “eyes on the ground”—quoting a line from “Othello,” he said, “Give me the ocular proof.” The broader aim, the consultant said, is to “encourage ethnic tensions” and undermine the regime.

The new mission for the combat troops is a product of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s long-standing interest in expanding the role of the military in covert operations, which was made official policy in the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, published in February. Such activities, if conducted by C.I.A. operatives, would need a Presidential Finding and would have to be reported to key members of Congress.

“ ‘Force protection’ is the new buzzword,” the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the Pentagon’s position that clandestine activities that can be broadly classified as preparing the battlefield or protecting troops are military, not intelligence, operations, and are therefore not subject to congressional oversight. “The guys in the Joint Chiefs of Staff say there are a lot of uncertainties in Iran,” he said. “We need to have more than what we had in Iraq. Now we have the green light to do everything we want.”



The President’s deep distrust of Ahmadinejad has strengthened his determination to confront Iran. This view has been reinforced by allegations that Ahmadinejad, who joined a special-forces brigade of the Revolutionary Guards in 1986, may have been involved in terrorist activities in the late eighties. (There are gaps in Ahmadinejad’s official biography in this period.) Ahmadinejad has reportedly been connected to Imad Mughniyeh, a terrorist who has been implicated in the deadly bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, in 1983. Mughniyeh was then the security chief of Hezbollah; he remains on the F.B.I.’s list of most-wanted terrorists.

Robert Baer, who was a C.I.A. officer in the Middle East and elsewhere for two decades, told me that Ahmadinejad and his Revolutionary Guard colleagues in the Iranian government “are capable of making a bomb, hiding it, and launching it at Israel. They’re apocalyptic Shiites. If you’re sitting in Tel Aviv and you believe they’ve got nukes and missiles—you’ve got to take them out. These guys are nuts, and there’s no reason to back off.”

Under Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards have expanded their power base throughout the Iranian bureaucracy; by the end of January, they had replaced thousands of civil servants with their own members. One former senior United Nations official, who has extensive experience with Iran, depicted the turnover as “a white coup,” with ominous implications for the West. “Professionals in the Foreign Ministry are out; others are waiting to be kicked out,” he said. “We may be too late. These guys now believe that they are stronger than ever since the revolution.” He said that, particularly in consideration of China’s emergence as a superpower, Iran’s attitude was “To hell with the West. You can do as much as you like.”

Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is considered by many experts to be in a stronger position than Ahmadinejad. “Ahmadinejad is not in control,” one European diplomat told me. “Power is diffuse in Iran. The Revolutionary Guards are among the key backers of the nuclear program, but, ultimately, I don’t think they are in charge of it. The Supreme Leader has the casting vote on the nuclear program, and the Guards will not take action without his approval.”

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said that “allowing Iran to have the bomb is not on the table. We cannot have nukes being sent downstream to a terror network. It’s just too dangerous.” He added, “The whole internal debate is on which way to go”—in terms of stopping the Iranian program. It is possible, the adviser said, that Iran will unilaterally renounce its nuclear plans—and forestall the American action. “God may smile on us, but I don’t think so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen.”



While almost no one disputes Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there is intense debate over how soon it could get the bomb, and what to do about that. Robert Gallucci, a former government expert on nonproliferation who is now the dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, told me, “Based on what I know, Iran could be eight to ten years away” from developing a deliverable nuclear weapon. Gallucci added, “If they had a covert nuclear program and we could prove it, and we could not stop it by negotiation, diplomacy, or the threat of sanctions, I’d be in favor of taking it out. But if you do it”—bomb Iran—“without being able to show there’s a secret program, you’re in trouble.”

Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, told the Knesset last December that “Iran is one to two years away, at the latest, from having enriched uranium. From that point, the completion of their nuclear weapon is simply a technical matter.” In a conversation with me, a senior Israeli intelligence official talked about what he said was Iran’s duplicity: “There are two parallel nuclear programs” inside Iran—the program declared to the I.A.E.A. and a separate operation, run by the military and the Revolutionary Guards. Israeli officials have repeatedly made this argument, but Israel has not produced public evidence to support it. Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term, told me, “I think Iran has a secret nuclear-weapons program—I believe it, but I don’t know it.”

In recent months, the Pakistani government has given the U.S. new access to A. Q. Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb. Khan, who is now living under house arrest in Islamabad, is accused of setting up a black market in nuclear materials; he made at least one clandestine visit to Tehran in the late nineteen-eighties. In the most recent interrogations, Khan has provided information on Iran’s weapons design and its time line for building a bomb. “The picture is of ‘unquestionable danger,’ ” the former senior intelligence official said. (The Pentagon adviser also confirmed that Khan has been “singing like a canary.”) The concern, the former senior official said, is that “Khan has credibility problems. He is suggestible, and he’s telling the neoconservatives what they want to hear”—or what might be useful to Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf, who is under pressure to assist Washington in the war on terror.

“I think Khan’s leading us on,” the former intelligence official said. “I don’t know anybody who says, ‘Here’s the smoking gun.’ But lights are beginning to blink. He’s feeding us information on the time line, and targeting information is coming in from our own sources— sensors and the covert teams. The C.I.A., which was so burned by Iraqi W.M.D., is going to the Pentagon and the Vice-President’s office saying, ‘It’s all new stuff.’ People in the Administration are saying, ‘We’ve got enough.’ ”

The Administration’s case against Iran is compromised by its history of promoting false intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. In a recent essay on the Foreign Policy Web site, entitled “Fool Me Twice,” Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote, “The unfolding administration strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its successful campaign for the Iraq war.” He noted several parallels:

The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S. Secretary of State tells Congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The Secretary of Defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism.


Cirincione called some of the Administration’s claims about Iran “questionable” or lacking in evidence. When I spoke to him, he asked, “What do we know? What is the threat? The question is: How urgent is all this?” The answer, he said, “is in the intelligence community and the I.A.E.A.” (In August, the Washington Post reported that the most recent comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate predicted that Iran was a decade away from being a nuclear power.)

Last year, the Bush Administration briefed I.A.E.A. officials on what it said was new and alarming information about Iran’s weapons program which had been retrieved from an Iranian’s laptop. The new data included more than a thousand pages of technical drawings of weapons systems. The Washington Post reported that there were also designs for a small facility that could be used in the uranium-enrichment process. Leaks about the laptop became the focal point of stories in the Times and elsewhere. The stories were generally careful to note that the materials could have been fabricated, but also quoted senior American officials as saying that they appeared to be legitimate. The headline in the Times’ account read, “RELYING ON COMPUTER, U.S. SEEKS TO PROVE IRAN’S NUCLEAR AIMS.”

I was told in interviews with American and European intelligence officials, however, that the laptop was more suspect and less revelatory than it had been depicted. The Iranian who owned the laptop had initially been recruited by German and American intelligence operatives, working together. The Americans eventually lost interest in him. The Germans kept on, but the Iranian was seized by the Iranian counter-intelligence force. It is not known where he is today. Some family members managed to leave Iran with his laptop and handed it over at a U.S. embassy, apparently in Europe. It was a classic “walk-in.”

A European intelligence official said, “There was some hesitation on our side” about what the materials really proved, “and we are still not convinced.” The drawings were not meticulous, as newspaper accounts suggested, “but had the character of sketches,” the European official said. “It was not a slam-dunk smoking gun.”



The threat of American military action has created dismay at the headquarters of the I.A.E.A., in Vienna. The agency’s officials believe that Iran wants to be able to make a nuclear weapon, but “nobody has presented an inch of evidence of a parallel nuclear-weapons program in Iran,” the high-ranking diplomat told me. The I.A.E.A.’s best estimate is that the Iranians are five years away from building a nuclear bomb. “But, if the United States does anything militarily, they will make the development of a bomb a matter of Iranian national pride,” the diplomat said. “The whole issue is America’s risk assessment of Iran’s future intentions, and they don’t trust the regime. Iran is a menace to American policy.”

In Vienna, I was told of an exceedingly testy meeting earlier this year between Mohamed ElBaradei, the I.A.E.A.’s director-general, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, and Robert Joseph, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control. Joseph’s message was blunt, one diplomat recalled: “We cannot have a single centrifuge spinning in Iran. Iran is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and our allies, and we will not tolerate it. We want you to give us an understanding that you will not say anything publicly that will undermine us. ”

Joseph’s heavy-handedness was unnecessary, the diplomat said, since the I.A.E.A. already had been inclined to take a hard stand against Iran. “All of the inspectors are angry at being misled by the Iranians, and some think the Iranian leadership are nutcases—one hundred per cent totally certified nuts,” the diplomat said. He added that ElBaradei’s overriding concern is that the Iranian leaders “want confrontation, just like the neocons on the other side”—in Washington. “At the end of the day, it will work only if the United States agrees to talk to the Iranians.”

The central question—whether Iran will be able to proceed with its plans to enrich uranium—is now before the United Nations, with the Russians and the Chinese reluctant to impose sanctions on Tehran. A discouraged former I.A.E.A. official told me in late March that, at this point, “there’s nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it. Even if they announce a stoppage of enrichment, nobody will believe them. It’s a dead end.”

Another diplomat in Vienna asked me, “Why would the West take the risk of going to war against that kind of target without giving it to the I.A.E.A. to verify? We’re low-cost, and we can create a program that will force Iran to put its cards on the table.” A Western Ambassador in Vienna expressed similar distress at the White House’s dismissal of the I.A.E.A. He said, “If you don’t believe that the I.A.E.A. can establish an inspection system—if you don’t trust them—you can only bomb.”



There is little sympathy for the I.A.E.A. in the Bush Administration or among its European allies. “We’re quite frustrated with the director-general,” the European diplomat told me. “His basic approach has been to describe this as a dispute between two sides with equal weight. It’s not. We’re the good guys! ElBaradei has been pushing the idea of letting Iran have a small nuclear-enrichment program, which is ludicrous. It’s not his job to push ideas that pose a serious proliferation risk.”

The Europeans are rattled, however, by their growing perception that President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney believe a bombing campaign will be needed, and that their real goal is regime change. “Everyone is on the same page about the Iranian bomb, but the United States wants regime change,” a European diplomatic adviser told me. He added, “The Europeans have a role to play as long as they don’t have to choose between going along with the Russians and the Chinese or going along with Washington on something they don’t want. Their policy is to keep the Americans engaged in something the Europeans can live with. It may be untenable.”

“The Brits think this is a very bad idea,” Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staff member who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, told me, “but they’re really worried we’re going to do it.” The European diplomatic adviser acknowledged that the British Foreign Office was aware of war planning in Washington but that, “short of a smoking gun, it’s going to be very difficult to line up the Europeans on Iran.” He said that the British “are jumpy about the Americans going full bore on the Iranians, with no compromise.”

The European diplomat said that he was skeptical that Iran, given its record, had admitted to everything it was doing, but “to the best of our knowledge the Iranian capability is not at the point where they could successfully run centrifuges” to enrich uranium in quantity. One reason for pursuing diplomacy was, he said, Iran’s essential pragmatism. “The regime acts in its best interests,” he said. Iran’s leaders “take a hard-line approach on the nuclear issue and they want to call the American bluff,” believing that “the tougher they are the more likely the West will fold.” But, he said, “From what we’ve seen with Iran, they will appear superconfident until the moment they back off.”

The diplomat went on, “You never reward bad behavior, and this is not the time to offer concessions. We need to find ways to impose sufficient costs to bring the regime to its senses. It’s going to be a close call, but I think if there is unity in opposition and the price imposed”—in sanctions—“is sufficient, they may back down. It’s too early to give up on the U.N. route.” He added, “If the diplomatic process doesn’t work, there is no military ‘solution.’ There may be a military option, but the impact could be catastrophic.”

Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, was George Bush’s most dependable ally in the year leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But he and his party have been racked by a series of financial scandals, and his popularity is at a low point. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said last year that military action against Iran was “inconceivable.” Blair has been more circumspect, saying publicly that one should never take options off the table.

Other European officials expressed similar skepticism about the value of an American bombing campaign. “The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically,” the European intelligence official told me. “He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse.” An American attack, he said, would alienate ordinary Iranians, including those who might be sympathetic to the U.S. “Iran is no longer living in the Stone Age, and the young people there have access to U.S. movies and books, and they love it,” he said. “If there was a charm offensive with Iran, the mullahs would be in trouble in the long run.”

Another European official told me that he was aware that many in Washington wanted action. “It’s always the same guys,” he said, with a resigned shrug. “There is a belief that diplomacy is doomed to fail. The timetable is short.”

A key ally with an important voice in the debate is Israel, whose leadership has warned for years that it viewed any attempt by Iran to begin enriching uranium as a point of no return. I was told by several officials that the White House’s interest in preventing an Israeli attack on a Muslim country, which would provoke a backlash across the region, was a factor in its decision to begin the current operational planning. In a speech in Cleveland on March 20th, President Bush depicted Ahmadinejad’s hostility toward Israel as a “serious threat. It’s a threat to world peace.” He added, “I made it clear, I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel.”



Any American bombing attack, Richard Armitage told me, would have to consider the following questions: “What will happen in the other Islamic countries? What ability does Iran have to reach us and touch us globally—that is, terrorism? Will Syria and Lebanon up the pressure on Israel? What does the attack do to our already diminished international standing? And what does this mean for Russia, China, and the U.N. Security Council?”

Iran, which now produces nearly four million barrels of oil a day, would not have to cut off production to disrupt the world’s oil markets. It could blockade or mine the Strait of Hormuz, the thirty-four-mile-wide passage through which Middle Eastern oil reaches the Indian Ocean. Nonetheless, the recently retired defense official dismissed the strategic consequences of such actions. He told me that the U.S. Navy could keep shipping open by conducting salvage missions and putting mine- sweepers to work. “It’s impossible to block passage,” he said. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon also said he believed that the oil problem could be managed, pointing out that the U.S. has enough in its strategic reserves to keep America running for sixty days. However, those in the oil business I spoke to were less optimistic; one industry expert estimated that the price per barrel would immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the duration and scope of the conflict.

Michel Samaha, a veteran Lebanese Christian politician and former cabinet minister in Beirut, told me that the Iranian retaliation might be focussed on exposed oil and gas fields in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. “They would be at risk,” he said, “and this could begin the real jihad of Iran versus the West. You will have a messy world.”

Iran could also initiate a wave of terror attacks in Iraq and elsewhere, with the help of Hezbollah. On April 2nd, the Washington Post reported that the planning to counter such attacks “is consuming a lot of time” at U.S. intelligence agencies. “The best terror network in the world has remained neutral in the terror war for the past several years,” the Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said of Hezbollah. “This will mobilize them and put us up against the group that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon. If we move against Iran, Hezbollah will not sit on the sidelines. Unless the Israelis take them out, they will mobilize against us.” (When I asked the government consultant about that possibility, he said that, if Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, “Israel and the new Lebanese government will finish them off.”)

The adviser went on, “If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle.” The American, British, and other coalition forces in Iraq would be at greater risk of attack from Iranian troops or from Shiite militias operating on instructions from Iran. (Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, has close ties to the leading Shiite parties in Iraq.) A retired four-star general told me that, despite the eight thousand British troops in the region, “the Iranians could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck.”

“If you attack,” the high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna, “Ahmadinejad will be the new Saddam Hussein of the Arab world, but with more credibility and more power. You must bite the bullet and sit down with the Iranians.”

The diplomat went on, “There are people in Washington who would be unhappy if we found a solution. They are still banking on isolation and regime change. This is wishful thinking.” He added, “The window of opportunity is now.”

    Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?, NYr, Issue of 2006-04-17 Posted 2006-04-10, http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact

Bush Ordered Declassification, Official Says

April 10, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, April 9 — A senior administration official confirmed for the first time on Sunday that President Bush had ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq in an effort to rebut critics who said the administration had exaggerated the nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

But the official said that Mr. Bush did not designate Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., or anyone else, to release the information to reporters.

The statement by the official came after the White House had declined to confirm, for three days, Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony that he had been told by Mr. Cheney that Mr. Bush had authorized the disclosure. The official declined to be named, because of an administration policy of not commenting on issues now in court. Confirmation that Mr. Bush ordered the declassification was published late Saturday by The Associated Press, which quoted "an attorney knowledgeable about the case." Once it appeared, the administration official was willing to confirm its details.

The official responded briefly via e-mail on Sunday to questions from The New York Times.

Before the invasion of Iraq, the information from an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate was used by both Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to bolster their argument that Mr. Hussein posed a threat, and was trying to reconstitute a nuclear program that was dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War.

The disclosure on Sunday appeared intended to bolster the White House argument that Mr. Bush was acting well within his legal authority when he ordered that key conclusions of the classified intelligence estimate should be revealed to make clear that intelligence agencies believed Mr. Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa.

Moreover, the disclosure seemed intended to suggest that Mr. Bush might have played only a peripheral role in the release of the classified material and was uninformed about the specifics — like the effort to dispatch Mr. Libby to discuss the estimate with reporters.

The explanation offered Sunday left open several questions, including when Mr. Bush acted and whether he did so on the advice or at the request of Mr. Cheney. Still unclear is the nature of the communication between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. Also unknown is whether Mr. Bush fully realized what information Mr. Cheney planned to disclose through Mr. Libby or was aware of the precise use that Mr. Cheney intended to make of the material.

It has been known that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were focused on the uranium issue in June 2003, well before Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, saying that nothing he had seen on a mission to Niger for the C.I.A. confirmed that Mr. Hussein was seeking uranium.

If Mr. Bush acted that early, it would suggest that the administration was growing concerned as evidence emerged that the intelligence was flawed. But the White House account also appears to separate Mr. Bush from the involvement in the selective release of the information to a few reporters, first Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, then Judith Miller of The New York Times. Both say they met Mr. Libby; neither authored articles about the disclosure after their meetings.

A separate effort was occurring simultaneously at the White House to declassify a significant part of the estimate by July 18, 2003. It is unclear why that process was necessary if Mr. Bush had already authorized the release of the information.

The disclosure that Mr. Bush had spoken with Mr. Cheney about the release of material from the intelligence report on Iraq was made in a legal brief filed last Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case.

Mr. Fitzgerald's brief indicates that Mr. Cheney spoke twice with Mr. Libby about the leak of information from the intelligence estimate. Their first conversation took place sometime at the end of June, according to lawyers with clients in the case. The Washington Post reported Saturday that Mr. Libby provided information from the estimate to Mr. Woodward on June, 27, 2003.

Mr. Fitzgerald divulged the White House leak effort as part of his legal maneuvering to restrict Mr. Libby's access to classified documents for use in his trial on perjury and obstruction charges. Mr. Libby has sought the material in an apparent effort to show that he was primarily focused on the intelligence estimate and might have misspoken when he was asked during the inquiry about his conversations with journalists relating to the identity of Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, a C.I.A. officer.

    Bush Ordered Declassification, Official Says, NYT, 10.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/washington/10leak.html

Iraq Findings Leaked by Cheney's Aide Were Disputed

April 9, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID BARSTOW

WASHINGTON, April 8 — President Bush's apparent order authorizing a senior White House official to reveal to a reporter previously classified intelligence about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain uranium came as the information was already being discredited by several other officials in the administration, interviews and documents from the time show.

A review of the records and interviews conducted during and after the crucial period in June and July of 2003 also show that what the aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., said he was authorized to portray as a "key judgment" by intelligence officers had in fact been given much less prominence in the most important assessment of Iraq's weapons capability.

Mr. Libby said he drew on that report, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, when he spoke with the reporter. However, the conclusions about Mr. Hussein's search for uranium appear to have been buried deeper in the report in part because of doubts about their reliability.

The new account of the interactions among Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby was spelled out last week in a court filing by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case. It adds considerably to a picture of an administration in some disarray as the failure to discover illicit weapons in Iraq had undermined the central rationale for the American invasion in March 2003.

Against the backdrop of what has previously been disclosed, the court filing sheds particular light on how Mr. Bush and some of his top deputies had begun to pull in different directions. Even as some officials, including Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, started to reveal deep doubts that Mr. Hussein had sought uranium to reconstitute his nuclear program, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were seeking to disseminate information suggesting that they had acted on credible intelligence, while not discussing their actions with other top aides.

Mr. Fitzgerald, in his filing, said that Mr. Libby had been authorized to tell Judith Miller, then a reporter for The New York Times, on July 8, 2003, that a key finding of the 2002 intelligence estimate on Iraq was that Baghdad had been vigorously seeking to acquire uranium from Africa.

But a week earlier, in an interview in his State Department office, Mr. Powell told three other reporters for The Times that intelligence agencies had essentially rejected that contention, and were "no longer carrying it as a credible item" by early 2003, when he was preparing to make the case against Iraq at the United Nations.

Mr. Powell's queasiness with some of the intelligence has been well known, but the new revelations suggest that long after he had concluded the intelligence was faulty, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were still promoting it.

Much remains unknown about that period. In his filing, Mr. Fitzgerald recounted a prosecutor's summary of Mr. Libby's testimony to the grand jury. Mr. Libby was, in turn, describing conversations with Mr. Cheney that included the vice president's description of discussions he had had with Mr. Bush. The White House is not commenting on the issue, saying it is still pending in court, but it has not disputed any of the assertions in the court filing. Mr. Libby has also not disputed the assertions.

The events took place at a time when the administration's failure to find illicit weapons in Iraq had raised serious questions about the credibility of prewar intelligence. The White House was finding itself under fire from critics, like former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who were suggesting that the administration's claims about Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium, featured in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address in 2003, had been exaggerated.

The court filing asserts that Mr. Bush authorized the disclosure of the intelligence in part to rebut claims that Mr. Wilson was making, including those in a television appearance and in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003. The filing revealed for the first time testimony by Mr. Libby saying that Mr. Bush, through Mr. Cheney, had authorized Mr. Libby to tell reporters that "a key judgment of the N.I.E. held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

In fact, that was not one of the "key judgments" of the document. Instead, it was the subject of several paragraphs on Page 24 of the document, which also acknowledged that Mr. Hussein had long possessed 500 tons of uranium that was under seal by international inspectors, and that no intelligence agencies had ever confirmed whether he had obtained any more of the material from Africa.

A report by the British in 2004, however, concluded that there was a reasonable basis to conclude that Mr. Hussein had sought to obtain uranium from Africa. Once enriched, uranium can be used for weapons fuel.

In addition to Mr. Powell, other administration officials, speaking on a not-for-attribution basis in early July 2003, were also acknowledging that the intelligence was widely known as seriously flawed. Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much publicly in a White House briefing on July 7, 2003.

But if the new court filing is correct, the next day, Mr. Libby, on behalf of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, provided an exaggerated account of the intelligence conclusions.

The court filing by Mr. Fitzgerald does not assert exactly when the conversation between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney took place, or exactly when Mr. Cheney communicated its contents to Mr. Libby, except that it was before July 8, 2003. The context of Mr. Fitzgerald's assertions makes clear, however, that the conversation took place in late June or early July 2003.

Mr. Libby also described the intelligence estimate to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post earlier, on June 27, 2003.

Mr. Fitzgerald's latest filing also describes the degree to which senior White House officials kept information from one another. Even as the president was dispatching Mr. Libby to disclose what until then had been classified intelligence to Ms. Miller of The Times, other White House officials, including Stephen J. Hadley, now Mr. Bush's national security adviser, were debating whether this same information should be formally declassified and made public, prosecutors assert.

But Mr. Libby "consciously decided not to make Mr. Hadley aware of the fact that defendant himself had already been disseminating the N.I.E. by leaking it to reporters while Mr. Hadley sought to get it formally declassified," Mr. Fitzgerald's motion states. Mr. Hadley's spokesman declined to comment on the filing on Friday.

But a senior official close to Mr. Hadley said that "it appears that the only three people who knew about the instant declassification were Dick Cheney, George Bush and Scooter Libby." The official refused to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the issue.

Why those three men were acting so quietly remains a mystery, and Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have never discussed it in public. Aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were beginning to suggest at the time that any exaggerations about Iraq's weapons program had been the fault of the C.I.A., not the White House.

Mr. Fitzgerald argued in his filing to the court last week that by July 8, Mr. Libby was trying to rebut the Op-Ed article in The Times, published by Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson reported in that article that he had been sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to search for evidence of the transaction, and reported back that there was insufficient evidence that any serious effort had taken place.

"The evidence will show that the July 6, 2003, Op-Ed by Mr. Wilson was viewed in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq," Mr. Fitzgerald argued.

But in interviews, other former and current senior officials have offered alternative explanations.

"Remember, this was taking place in the middle of the White House-C.I.A. war," one former White House official who witnessed the events said this week, refusing to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the subject.

As the controversy arose early that summer over why Mr. Bush had included mention of Iraqi uranium in his 2003 State of the Union address, the official recalled, White House officials were convinced that the C.I.A. was placing the blame on the president, suggesting he had politicized the intelligence.

By releasing Mr. Libby to discuss the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate, the official said, "they were dumping this back in Langley's lap," making it clear that Mr. Bush had relied on information provided by the intelligence agencies. The C.I.A. headquarters are in Langley, Va.

Later that week, George J. Tenet, then the C.I.A. director, took responsibility for the error, saying he had never read over the draft of the State of the Union address that had been sent to him.

According to Mr. Fitzgerald's motion, Mr. Libby testified that he was directed by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush to describe the uranium allegations to Ms. Miller of The Times as a "key judgment" of the National Intelligence Estimate. Citing intelligence as a "key judgment" in such estimates carries great weight with policy makers, because the reports are meant to highlight the most important and solid judgments of the government's intelligence agencies.

"Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the N.I.E. held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium," prosecutors wrote.

In fact, the estimate's key judgments, which were officially declassified 10 days after Mr. Libby's meeting with Ms. Miller, say nothing about the uranium allegations. The key judgments on Iraq's nuclear program — namely, that Iraq was again trying to build a bomb — were based instead on other intelligence, like the assertion that Iraq was seeking high-strength aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. Ms. Miller authored no newspaper article about the leaked weapons information.

In an interview with The Times in 2004, a senior intelligence official involved in drafting the estimate said the uranium allegations were excluded from the key judgments because the drafters knew there were serious doubts about their accuracy.

As a result, the official said, the drafters cast the uranium allegations as a minor element in the overall assessment of Iraq's nuclear capabilities. The assertion that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium was mentioned on the bottom of Page 24 of the 90-page document. The drafters also noted, in an annex attached to the end of the document, that State Department intelligence officials considered the uranium allegation "highly dubious."

    Iraq Findings Leaked by Cheney's Aide Were Disputed, NYT, 9.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/washington/09leak.html?hp&ex=1144641600&en=bc85efcb03b580b2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Vermont Democrats call for Bush impeachment

Sat Apr 8, 2006 8:11 PM ET
Reuters

RANDOLPH, Vermont (Reuters) - Democratic Party leaders in Vermont on Saturday passed a motion asking Congress to immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

In an elementary school cafeteria strewn with American flags and copies of the U.S. Constitution, some 100 state party officials agreed to make the request to the U.S. House of Representatives.

"You know in your own hearts and minds that something is terribly wrong in this country," said Margaret Lucenti, a Democrat from Vermont's capital Montpelier.

The measure asks the Republican-controlled House to pass articles of impeachment against Bush for misleading the nation on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and engaging in illegal wiretapping, among other charges.

Democratic state committees in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina have taken similar steps.

With a population of just 621,000 -- only Wyoming has fewer people -- the rural New England state is considered far left of mainstream American politics.

Last month residents of the Puritan-founded town of Newfane passed a resolution calling for the Republican president's impeachment. Since then at least six other Vermont towns have followed suit.

In 1999, more than two dozen towns called for a reduction in nuclear weapons. In 1974, one Vermont town meeting drew national attention when officials voted to seek the impeachment of then-President Richard Nixon.

"This is far bigger than a fringe movement on the left," said Dan DeWalt, a 49-year-old woodworker who drafted the Newfane impeachment resolution. "Vermont has a long tradition of speaking out on issues beyond our borders."

(Additional reporting by Jim Finkle)

    Vermont Democrats call for Bush impeachment, NYT, 9.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-09T001050Z_01_N08288314_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-VERMONT.xml

News Analysis

For President, First a Leak; Now, a Jam

April 8, 2006
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, April 7 — That President Bush authorized an aide to disclose classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons, as asserted in court papers, comes as no shock to official Washington. The leaking of secrets has long been a favored tool of policy debate, political combat and diplomatic one-upmanship.

"We've had leaking of this kind since the administration of George Washington," said Rick Shenkman, a presidential historian at George Mason University.

But the accusation that Mr. Bush, through Vice President Dick Cheney, authorized the aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to fight back against critics of the war by discussing a classified prewar intelligence estimate comes at a particularly awkward time for the administration.

And Mr. Libby's account, describing Mr. Bush's approving Mr. Cheney's request in 2003 that Mr. Libby, then the vice president's chief of staff, share reports on Iraqi weapons with a reporter for The New York Times, bares behind-the-scenes details that usually do not emerge until long after an administration has left office.

For months, Mr. Bush and his top aides have campaigned against leaks of classified information as a danger to the nation and as criminal acts. A Washington Post report on secret overseas jails run by the C.I.A. and a New York Times report on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency have led to criminal investigations, and scores of intelligence officers have been ordered to take polygraph tests.

In that context, the report that the president was himself approving a leak may do serious political damage, said Mr. Shenkman, who has a blog on presidential politics. "It does give the public such a powerful example of hypocrisy that I think it might linger for a while," he said.

Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, disputed the charge of a double standard on leaks. "There is a difference between declassifying information in the national interest and the unauthorized disclosure" of national security information, Mr. McClellan said Friday. Of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, part of which Mr. Libby shared with Judith Miller, then a Times reporter, Mr. McClellan said, "There was nothing in there that would compromise national security."

Mr. McClellan's tone contrasted sharply with that of administration officials after the N.S.A. story broke in December. Mr. Bush told a news conference at the time: "My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Others picked up the theme, including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director. On Feb. 2, Mr. Goss told a Senate committee, "It is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."

Republicans in Congress, led by Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, have also pressed the issue. By coincidence, the committee's report on the annual intelligence authorization bill was made public on Friday. It features a vehement attack, describing leakers as "a small few who have taken it upon themselves to, for political or other motives, recklessly and illegally disclose America's necessary secrets and national security information."

Leaking intelligence information to the news media, the committee reports, "costs untold millions of dollars in lost intelligence collection capabilities funded by U.S. taxpayers, literally puts lives in jeopardy, and makes the work by the honorable people of our intelligence community far more difficult."

In the case of Mr. Libby's disclosures to Ms. Miller, the consequences were hardly so dire. But neither was the political result evidently sought by the White House achieved.

Ms. Miller wrote no newspaper article about the leaked weapons information, and 10 days later the administration formally declassified a summary of the intelligence document in question.

Some earlier authorized disclosures by the Bush administration, to the reporter and author Bob Woodward, had far more impact. Mr. Woodward's 2002 book, "Bush at War," based on extensive interviews with Mr. Bush and other officials, as well as access to internal White House documents, was a generally positive portrait. Mr. Woodward's 2004 book, "Plan of Attack," was less warmly received at the White House.

The Bush administration, like its predecessors, has also used formal, public declassification of secret intelligence for policy purposes. The prewar presentation to the United Nations by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, used N.S.A. intercepts of Iraqi military officers and satellite photos of Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons sites to make the case. In 1983, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, President Ronald Reagan's United Nations ambassador, used dramatic N.S.A. recordings to denounce the Soviet Union for shooting down a South Korean civilian airliner.

There have also been cases in which presidents, in the heat of the moment, have spontaneously revealed secrets. During the 1964 presidential campaign, under attack by Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee, as soft on defense, President Lyndon B. Johnson chose to reveal the existence of a highly classified, experimental reconnaissance aircraft, the SR-71 Blackbird.

In the Pentagon Papers case of 1971, the Nixon administration went to court to halt publication of a secret government history of the Vietnam War, which had been leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. Max Frankel, then the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, filed an 18-page affidavit that gave a colorful insider's account of the role of leaked secrets as the lifeblood of Washington.

Mr. Frankel, who had spent a decade as a journalist in the capital, recalled President John F. Kennedy's staff members trying to prove his "toughness" by passing on quotations from an argument he had had with the Soviet foreign minister. Mr. Frankel told of standing beside President Johnson, "knee-deep in his Texas swimming pool," as Mr. Johnson recounted for more than an hour his conversation of the day before with the Soviet prime minister.

Without the use of secrets, Mr. Frankel argued at the time, "there could be no adequate diplomatic, military and political reporting of the kind our people take for granted."

ThomShanker contributed reporting for this article.

    For President, First a Leak; Now, a Jam, NYT, 8.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/washington/08assess.html?hp&ex=1144555200&en=150b63151939006d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Facing Tough Questions, Bush Defends War

April 7, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 6 — President Bush on Thursday faced some unusually tough — even hostile, in one case — questioning from members of a nonpartisan audience on a swing through North Carolina as part of his campaign to buoy support for the Iraq war.

He, in turn, offered some of his most direct comments about where he contended United States operations in Iraq had gone wrong, saying that perhaps training of Iraqi police officers should have started earlier, that the Iraqi military was initially unprepared for threats from within its borders and that prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was disgraceful.

Still, Mr. Bush said, "I strongly believe what we're doing is the right thing," and he said he was certain of victory.

The visit here was part of the White House strategy to put Mr. Bush in front of crowds, including those hostile to him, as he tries to reverse sagging support for the war, and his presidency, in a crucial election year for his party in Congress.

But the event on Thursday, a speech about national security before the World Affairs Council of Charlotte, also highlighted the downside for his administration of breaking away from the friendly town hall meetings packed with pre-screened audiences that were a staple of his 2004 re-election campaign.

"While I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges," said a man who later identified himself as Harry Taylor, a 61-year-old commercial real estate broker. Mr. Taylor also said he was a member of the liberal political group Move On, but attended the speech on his own behalf.

Standing on a stage in shirtsleeves, holding a microphone, Mr. Bush drew applause and laughter by chiming in, "I'm not your favorite guy."

Mr. Taylor went on, "What I wanted to say to you is that I — in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate."

Mr. Bush hushed boos from the audience by saying: "No, wait a sec. Let him speak."

Mr. Taylor continued, "I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself."

Mr. Bush said he approved a program for eavesdropping without warrants after consulting with Republicans and Democrats in Congress and lawyers, and called it "a decision I made about protecting this country."

"I'm not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program," he said.

He was more reflective when another audience member complimented him for being steadfast but then asked him what came to mind "if you look back and go, 'Maybe I should have done this differently.' "

Referring to abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, Mr. Bush said, "What took place there and the pictures there just represented everything we didn't stand for." He added: "I wish that could be done over. It was a disgraceful experience."

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said the president was not rankled by the tough questions. "The more the American people can understand his thinking and beliefs, the better," Mr. McClellan said. "And he enjoys the give and take of these kinds of formats."

Plenty of the comments were far gentler. One man thanked the president on behalf of an Iraqi friend, for improving her family's life there. A woman told him, "My heroes have always been cowboys."

But the administration is also under increasing pressure to address directly what polls suggest to be growing antiwar sentiment — evidenced by the antiwar protests that Mr. Bush's motorcade passed here and in Bridgeport, Conn., on Wednesday. While the administration has been increasingly acknowledging mistakes, it continues to emphasize that it believes its overall strategic objectives are sound and achievable.

The process has not been altogether smooth. Administration officials also found themselves explaining Thursday what appeared to be a public tiff between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

On WDAY radio in Fargo, N.D., on Tuesday an interviewer asked Mr. Rumsfeld about Ms. Rice's statement in Liverpool, England, last week that the United States had made "tactical errors, thousands of them," in Iraq, though she said so in the context of saying that the administration's overall strategy would be vindicated by history.

Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I don't know what she was talking about, to be perfectly honest," according to a Defense Department transcript of the interview. He implied that the criticism stemmed from "a lack of understanding of what warfare is all about."

At a briefing at the Pentagon on Thursday he said, "I talked to Condi about that, and she pointed out the transcript where she said she was speaking figuratively, not literally."

Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

    Facing Tough Questions, Bush Defends War, NYT, 6.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/us/07prexy.html?_r=1&oref=login

Bush said to have cleared Iraq leak

Thu Apr 6, 2006 10:16 PM ET
Reuters
By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former top White House aide testified that President George W. Bush authorized leaking classified intelligence in 2003 in the face of criticism of his Iraq policy from a former ambassador, according to court papers made public on Thursday.

Democrats seized on the news, accusing Bush of hypocrisy. The president has often denounced leaks from his administration and vowed to punish the leakers. This was the first time Bush was directly linked to this incident.

"If the disclosure is true, it's breathtaking. The president is revealed as the leaker-in-chief," said Rep. Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The papers cited Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, as testifying to a federal grand jury that Cheney had told him that Bush authorized him to disclose information from a secret National Intelligence Estimate to a New York Times reporter in July 2003.

The disclosure arose out of a long-running investigation into the leak of CIA's operative Valerie Plame's identity. Libby testified that he was specifically directed by the vice president to reveal the intelligence information to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

The court documents did not say that Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity.

Libby also said he was cleared to brief the reporter about Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who had criticized Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Democrats, who hope to seize control of Congress from Republicans in November elections, demanded an explanation. Bush ignored a reporter's shouted question about the case.

The White House declined to discuss the disclosure. "Our policy is not to discuss ongoing legal proceedings and that policy is unchanged," said spokesman, Ken Lisaius.

Libby resigned from the administration last October when he was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the leaking of Plame's name.

The information about Bush came to light in a 39-page document filed by Fitzgerald in which he argued against Libby's demand for more government documents, which his lawyers say he needs to defend himself.

Libby testified he had been authorized to disclose the information because it rebutted Wilson and Cheney thought it "very important" for it to come out.

Wilson has said White House officials deliberately leaked his wife's identity to pay him back for attacking the grounds used by Bush to justify the Iraq invasion.

'UNIQUE AUTHORIZATION'

Bush had the authority to declassify the material. But the court papers quoted Libby as saying that "it was unique in his recollection" to get approval from the president, via the vice president, for such an action.

The leak occurred at a time when opponents were stepping up their criticism of the March 2003 invasion after U.S. forces had failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Libby said he brought a brief summary of the key findings when he met with Miller on July 8, 2003 at a hotel.

In Congress, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said, "President Bush must fully disclose his participation in the selective leaking of classified information."

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said, "It's time for the White House to ... just step forward and honestly state what they knew, when they knew it and what they did about it."

New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer demanded an explanation from Bush and Cheney.

"The president has said he'd fire anyone who leaked this kind of information. But it now seems that he authorized leaks just like this in the first place. The American people deserve the truth," he told reporters.

Bush has often complained about leaks in Washington and vowed to take action against those who released unauthorized information to the public.

"There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington," he said after the Plame news broke in 2003.

"There's leaks at the executive branch, there's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush said then.

    Bush said to have cleared Iraq leak, R, 6.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-04-07T021611Z_01_WAT005235_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-LEAK.xml

Bush picks former firefighter as FEMA chief

Thu Apr 6, 2006 10:27 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush chose acting Federal Emergency Management Agency Director David Paulison on Thursday as permanent head of the embattled agency with hurricane season two months away.

Paulison, 59, a veteran firefighter, was named acting director of FEMA after Michael Brown resigned last September in the face of bitter complaints about the federal government's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

The nomination requires Senate confirmation.

At a news conference to introduce the nominee, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said a lot of people had been considered for the vacancy, but Paulison was the only one he wanted to recommend to Bush.

"I think it would be a mistake to suggest that there were people who were approached and asked to take the job and turned it down, because the decision about who I would recommend wasn't made until fairly recently," Chertoff told reporters.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Bush was turning to Paulison after seven candidates for director or another top FEMA job pulled out of the running.

The candidates were said to be unconvinced the administration was serious about fixing FEMA or that there was enough time to get it done before Bush's second term ends in January 2009.

The Times said that of the 30 most senior jobs at FEMA, 11 were filled by officials appointed on an acting basis. It said Kentucky Republican Rep. Harold Rogers, chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees the Homeland Security Department's budget, threatened last week to hold up action on the budget bill until the top jobs at FEMA were filled.

At the news conference, Chertoff announced three other senior FEMA appointments. He acknowledged "a number" of people were in jobs on an acting basis, but said he expected to fill those positions soon.

"We're on a path now to get about 95 percent of the vacancies filled in the department by June 1, which is kind of our target date," Chertoff said.

The hurricane season starts on June 1.

The agency faces heavy criticism for its rebuilding role after Katrina devastated New Orleans and killed more than 1,300 people.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said on Monday he would urge Chertoff to replace the FEMA team in charge of setting up travel-trailer villages that have sprung up to house residents whose homes were damaged.

The demand was sparked by a weekend fracas in which security guards threatened homeowners opposed to a temporary housing site.

    Bush picks former firefighter as FEMA chief, R, 6.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-07T022658Z_01_WBT005106_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-FEMA.xml

Watergate figure appears at censure hearing

Posted 3/31/2006 10:21 AM Updated 3/31/2006 11:51 PM
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — John W. Dean, Richard Nixon's White House lawyer, told senators Friday that President Bush's domestic spying exceeds the wrongdoing that toppled his former boss. (On Deadline: Who's side are you on?)

Bush, Dean told the Senate Judiciary Committee, should be censured and possibly impeached.

"Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented," Dean said. "Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it."

Republicans and their witnesses rejected the comparison between Watergate and Bush's wiretapping program, and attributed Sen. Russell Feingold's censure resolution to posturing in a year of midterm elections.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the comparison to Watergate is "apples and oranges" because Nixon's actions were more about saving himself and his presidency than national security.

"Quit trying to score political points," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, shot across the aisle at committee Democrats.

In fact, only two Democrats have co-sponsored Feingold's resolution: Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Barbara Boxer of California. The rest have distanced themselves from the proposal, with many saying the resolution is premature because a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of the eavesdropping program has not concluded.

At issue is whether Bush's secretive domestic spying program violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Bush has said the National Security Agency's wiretapping program is aimed at finding terrorists before they strike on American soil by tapping the phones of people making calls overseas. He has launched a criminal investigation to find out who leaked the program's existence to The New York Times, saying the report in December tipped off anyone who might be planning attacks.

At a Republican fundraiser in Pensacola, Fla., Friday night, Bush political adviser Karl Rove said, "How ridiculous in a time of war is it to have concern about Osama bin Laden's civil liberties over the security interests of the United states of America?"

Critics say Bush already has the ability to conduct wiretaps under the FISA law and any information gathered without a court order may be inadmissible at a trial.

Feingold's measure would condemn Bush's "unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining the court orders required" by the FISA act.

"If we in the Congress don't stand up for ourselves and the American people, we become complicit in the lawbreaking," Feingold, D-Wis., told the panel. "The resolution of censure is the appropriate response."

Feingold summoned Dean to the hearing in part because the former White House counsel made his suspicions about the Bush administration clear long before the wiretapping program became public.

In his 2004 book, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, Dean wrote that the former Texas governor began to evoke Nixonian memories with his strategies against Republican John McCain's primary challenge in South Carolina in 2000.

After The New York Times revealed the NSA program in December, Dean wrote that "Bush may have outdone Nixon" and may be worthy of impeachment.

"Nixon's illegal surveillance was limited; Bush's, it is developing, may be extraordinarily broad in scope," Dean wrote in a column for FindLaw.com in December.

Dean served four months in prison for his role in Watergate, a political scandal that involved illegal wiretapping, burglary and abuse of power aimed at Nixon enemies. Administration officials were implicated in the ensuing cover-up.

Nixon resigned Aug. 9, 1974, less than two weeks after the House Judiciary Committee began approving three articles of impeachment against him, charging obstruction of justice as well as abuse of power and withholding evidence.

Dean said Friday that the issue is one of checks and balances, adding Congress should pass some measure serving a warning to Bush if it can't stomach a censure resolution.

"The president needs to be reminded that separation of powers does not mean an isolation of powers," he said.

    Watergate figure appears at censure hearing, UT, 31.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-31-censure_x.htm

Man in the News

Joshua Brewster Bolten: Longtime Ally, Now a Top Aide

Published: March 29, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, March 28 — Joshua B. Bolten, the incoming White House chief of staff, would appear to have the insider credentials and ability to soothe Congress that the White House desperately needs.

He grew up in establishment Washington, the son of a C.I.A. officer, and graduated from the elite St. Albans School, former Vice President Al Gore's alma mater. As White House budget director, he amused his 500-member staff by renaming his weekend rock band Deficit Attention Disorder for a performance at the Office of Management and Budget. He has nurtured relationships on Capitol Hill, and is personally close to President Bush.

But the question is whether Mr. Bolten is the man to right a listing presidency, and whether his skills, instincts and access to Mr. Bush are enough to overcome public anger over the war in Iraq and the growing questions in Washington about the competence of the West Wing staff. Mr. Bolten, after all, has been with Mr. Bush from his first days as a presidential candidate, and in the last three years has presided over the biggest budget deficits in the history of the United States.

"The last time Josh was in here, I said, 'How can a guy as smart as you are come up with such bad results?' " said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee. "He said, 'You can't pin this one on me.' "

Republicans in Congress reacted positively to the appointment but with barely stifled yawns.

"It's an indication that they're turning the page, which I think will be received favorably, but I don't think there's going to be any significant change in the way things are done over there," said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, who two weeks ago said that the White House staff lacked passion and urgency.

Still, Mr. Thune said, "he probably will do a better job of reaching out to Congress."

Supporters of Mr. Bolten insisted he would revitalize a moribund policy operation at a White House that failed in the past year to push a Social Security overhaul through Congress and is now facing strong resistance to Mr. Bush's plan to change immigration laws. They said Mr. Bolten, the influential but publicly invisible White House deputy chief of staff in Mr. Bush's first term, would help formulate and drive legislation in a way that Andrew H. Card Jr., the outgoing chief of staff, did not.

As deputy chief of staff, Mr. Bolten scheduled the president's almost daily 45 minutes of domestic "policy time" in the Oval Office, and determined what issue was discussed, who was invited and in large part how it could be sold on Capitol Hill. In the first term he drove an agenda dominated by the tax cuts that the White House relentlessly pushed through Congress.

"Josh would have a calendar up in his office, where he would, in consultation with everybody else, map out when the president would be briefed on an issue, then tie it to events on the Hill and major announcements," said Cesar V. Conda, Vice President Dick Cheney's former top economic policy aide who worked closely with Mr. Bolten. "He was really the maestro of the policy process. I was there a month after Harriet Miers took over, and it wasn't the same."

Mr. Conda was referring to Mr. Bolten's replacement, now the White House counsel.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Bolten, who worked in the White House Congressional liaison office of Mr. Bush's father, regularly stepped in as this administration's deal closer.

"I worked closely with him on everything from Medicare to the tax cuts," said Rob Portman, the United States trade representative and a former Republican congressman from Ohio who was a White House point man on Capitol Hill. "He was the one who ultimately pulled together the agency and White House folks and said, 'How do we get a result here?' He's not an ideologue."

Exactly what Mr. Bolten believes is something of a mystery, although he was considered a pragmatist who liked tax cuts and not a supply-side true believer in nearly six years at Goldman Sachs in the 1990's. He spent most of those years based in London, as the investment banking firm's chief lobbyist at the European Union's headquarters in Brussels, although he also worked for a short time there as the chief of staff to Jon Corzine, then the firm's co-chairman and now the Democratic governor of New Jersey.

When Mr. Bush named Mr. Bolten his budget director three years ago, Mr. Corzine, who was a United States senator from New Jersey at the time, called Mr. Bolten "on message and loyal to a fault."

Mr. Bolten, who described himself as a "policy geek" in an interview with Brian Lamb of C-Span late last year, has whitish-gray, closely cropped hair, round wire-rimmed glasses and the prosperous, buttoned-down look of a Washington corporate lawyer. At 51, he retains a slightly youthful look. At the White House, he is considered relatively mellow and more comfortable with reporters than Mr. Card.

Unlike other members of Mr. Bush's inner circle, Mr. Bolten makes occasional forays to the dinner parties of establishment Washington. He has turned up at the home of Ben Bradlee, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, and the writer Sally Quinn and has regularly dated women in the Bush administration. He distinguished himself at the 2000 Republican National Convention by appearing with the actress Bo Derek.

Mr. Bolten is also known for his motorcycle collection, although he most often rides a Harley.

"I've ridden motorcycles for a long time; it's not just a midlife crisis adoption," Mr. Bolten said on C-Span. "I've been riding motorcycles for about 25 years. And I enjoy it now I think especially because it's a form of relaxation and diversion that's beautiful and exhilarating. But you have to concentrate. So you need to clear your mind of everything else because if you're not concentrating properly when you're riding a motorcycle, you're putting your life in danger."

Joshua Brewster Bolten was born on Aug. 16, 1954. A graduate of Princeton and Stanford Law School, he grew up knowing little about the duties of his father, who worked in the C.I.A.'s directorate of operations, the agency's covert espionage arm. He plays bass guitar in his band, normally called the Compassionates. The lead singer is Tabitha Mueller, Mr. Card's daughter.

    Joshua Brewster Bolten: Longtime Ally, Now a Top Aide, NYT, 29.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/politics/29bolten.html?hp&ex=1143608400&en=a8a7361630a3e08a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In 1st Major Shift of 2nd Term, Bush Looks to Inner Circle

March 28, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID SANGER and JOHN O'NEIL

President Bush today announced the resignation of his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., in the first major staffing change of his troubled second term.

Mr. Card will be replaced by Joshua Bolten, the budget director.

At a brief White House ceremony, Mr. Bush said that Mr. Card had approached him "and raised the possibility of stepping down."

"He thought it might be time to return to private life," Mr. Bush said, adding that he had decided last weekend to accept Mr. Card's resignation.

Mr. Bush has come under increasing pressure in recent months from members of his own party to shake up his staff as a way of turning around his decline in popularity.

Many Republicans felt that even without Mr. Bush's mounting problems some new faces were needed. Mr. Card was approaching the record of the longest serving White House chief of staff, with a tenure rivaling that of Sherman Adams, the chief of staff to President Eisenhower.

Mr. Bush today praised Mr. Card, citing "legislative achievements from education to Medicare," the successful confirmation of two Supreme Court justices and the response to the Sept. 11th attacks.

"In all these challenges and crises I have relied on Andy's wise counsel, his calm in crisis and his absolute integrity and tireless dedication to public service," the President said.

But while many of Mr. Bush's problems are related to increasing public uneasiness over Iraq, it was Mr. Card who took the blame for the slowness of the White House staff's response to Hurricane Katrina and to criticism of the Dubai ports deal. Republicans have also become increasingly vocal about their perception that the White House has lost its political edge.

The move announced today, however, leaves in place Karl Rove, the President's top political adviser, who is a deputy chief of staff. And it does not represent an infusion of new blood, since Mr. Bolten is also a longtime adviser, and served as a deputy chief of staff from 2001 to 2003 before becoming budget director.

Mr. Bush praised Mr. Bolten today as "a man with broad experience, having worked on Capitol Hill and on Wall Street and in the White House" and described him as being respected by members of Congress of both parties.

Mr. Bolten, speaking after Mr. Bush, said that he would take the position after a transition of a few weeks.

After praising Mr. Card, he told Mr. Bush: "The agenda ahead is exciting. You've set a clear course, to protect our people at home, to promote freedom abroad and to expand prosperity."

Mr. Card, after thanking the President, said "It's a different season, and Josh Bolten is the right person for that season."

Mr. Bolten is a graduate of Princeton University, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Stanford Law School. During the Reagan administration, he was a staff member for the Senate Finance Committee, and served in the White House under President George H.W. Bush as deputy assistant for legislative affairs.

Between 1994 and 1999, he was executive director for legal and governmental affairs for Goldman Sachs International in London.

According to a profile of Mr. Bolten in the Stanford law school alumni magazine, he was the founder in the 2000 campaign of "Bikers for Bush." The article said that Mr. Bush's nickname for him was "Yosh."

Mr. Bush last week hinted that a personnel move was in the works. Asked during a press conference if he planned to bring to the White House an experienced Washington insider who could quell concerns among Republicans in Congress, Mr. Bush replied, "Well, I'm not going to announce it right now."

    In 1st Major Shift of 2nd Term, Bush Looks to Inner Circle, NYT, 28.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/politics/28cnd-bush.html?hp&ex=1143608400&en=8a72077229615c20&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush, on the Road, Adds to G.O.P. War Chest

March 25, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

INDIANAPOLIS, March 24 — President Bush took to the campaign trail Friday, raising $1.2 million for two of his party's most vulnerable incumbents: Representative Mike Sodrel of Indiana and Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

At a $1,000-a-plate luncheon in a downtown auditorium here, Mr. Bush delivered a 30-minute speech centered largely on a defense of the war in Iraq, and then exhorted the crowd of 500 to re-elect Mr. Sodrel, a freshman locked in a tight race against Baron Hill, a former Democratic congressman whom he unseated in 2004.

Later, Mr. Bush flew to Pennsylvania to join Mr. Santorum, who is facing a difficult race against the Democratic challenger, Robert P. Casey Jr., the state treasurer and son of a popular former governor.

The Santorum event, a dinner at a residence in the Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley Heights, was closed to the press. That was standard procedure for the Bush White House when a fund-raiser is held at a private home, but an excuse for Democrats to make a case that growing numbers of Republicans no longer want to be seen in public with a president bedeviled by political woes.

Yet when Mr. Bush arrived at the Pittsburgh airport on Friday, Mr. Santorum was the first to greet him, and the president spun the senator so that he faced the press pool for photos of the two of them, according to the pool report.

Further, whatever Mr. Bush's poll ratings in a year when his party is running hard to retain its majorities in both houses of Congress, Republicans in trouble embrace him and Vice President Dick Cheney for their ability to raise money. The president has raised more than $12.5 million for Republicans this year, the Republican National Committee says, and Mr. Cheney more than $1.5 million.

The fund-raiser for Mr. Sodrel was Mr. Bush's fourth for a House member facing re-election in 2006, and Mr. Cheney has held about two dozen House events in recent months, said Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

"The president and vice president are the best fund-raisers we have," said Mr. Forti, adding that the visits brought good local press for candidates. "They're on the front page of the paper the day before they come, the front page of the paper the day they're there and the front page the day after. It's great exposure."

Indeed, Mr. Sodrel was beaming Friday as he stood alongside Mr. Bush for the traditional grip-and-grin campaign photograph. His organization hoped to bring in $500,000 from the event.

But Mr. Bush's last fund-raising trip to Indiana, for Representative Chris Chocola, proved costly for the incumbent. The presidential visit generated critical news accounts about the security expense to taxpayers, and Mr. Chocola wound up promising to reimburse two Indiana communities, South Bend and Mishawaka, a total of $12,000.

And some Republicans, especially in swing states, do appear to be avoiding Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

On Monday, for instance, Thomas H. Kean Jr., a Republican running for the Senate from New Jersey, took an uncommon route to a fund-raiser on his behalf featuring Mr. Cheney; Mr. Kean, who is challenging Senator Robert Menendez, became trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic and did not arrive until after the vice president had left, prompting questions about whether he was practicing the politics of avoidance.

The same day, Senator Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican in a tough race, skipped an appearance by Mr. Bush in Cleveland. His campaign spokesman, Brian Seitchik, said Friday that the senator had been in Florida with his father, who is recuperating from surgery.

That was not the only Bush trip Mr. DeWine has missed. When the president appeared in Dublin, Ohio, in February to talk about health care, Mr. DeWine was back in Washington, running a subcommittee hearing. And when Mr. Bush traveled to Ohio to raise money for Mr. DeWine, the senator did not welcome him at the airport. "He wanted to greet his guests, the attendees, personally," Mr. Seitchik explained.

    Bush, on the Road, Adds to G.O.P. War Chest, NYT, 25.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/25/politics/25bush.html

Bush Is Facing a Difficult Path on Immigration

March 24, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, March 23 — In the days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, immigration policy was going to be President Bush's signature issue. It was central to his thinking as the former governor of a border state, key to his relationship with President Vicente Fox of Mexico and essential in attracting new Hispanic voters to the Republican Party.

Five years later, Mr. Bush has at last realized some momentum on immigration policy, but it is probably not the activity he once anticipated.

He has lost control of his own party on the issue, as many Republicans object to his call for a temporary guest-worker program, insisting instead that the focus be on shutting down the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico. It is not clear how much help he will get from Democrats in an election year.

The issue will come to the floor of the Senate next week, and the debate is shaping up as a free-for-all that will touch on economics, race and national identity.

At the end of next week, Mr. Bush is scheduled to meet with Mr. Fox in Cancún, Mexico. Immigration is likely to be a source of tension in their talks.

In short, Mr. Bush is facing another test of his remaining powers as president.

On Thursday, he called for calm in a White House meeting with groups pressing for changes in American immigration laws.

"I urge members of Congress and I urge people who like to comment on this issue to make sure the rhetoric is in accord with our traditions," the president said.

He added, in a warning to members of Congress, that "the debate must be done in a way that doesn't pit one group of people against another."

The discussion has intensified as Mr. Bush finds himself caught between two of his most important constituencies: business owners and managers on the one hand, conservatives on the other.

Philosophically, the president, whose own sensibility on the issue was shaped by his experience as governor of Texas, says he is committed to a program that meets the needs of business: the creation of a pool of legal foreign workers for industries that have come to rely on low-wage labor.

Mr. Bush also brings to the debate a stated belief that the country benefits from the immigration of hardworking people and their dreams of becoming Americans. He often talks about the United States as a land of immigrants, and on Monday in Cleveland he said that "my only advice for the Congress and for people in the debate is, understand what made America."

But politically, Mr. Bush must satisfy his most conservative supporters. Many of them view illegal immigration as a strain on schools, the health care system and the economy, and some have warned that in their opinion the nation's cultural identity could be washed away by a flood of low-income Spanish-speaking workers.

For now, Mr. Bush is trying to navigate the storm with a proposal that tries to satisfy both groups: a toughened border enforcement plan coupled with a temporary guest-worker program that would allow some of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States to register for legal status and remain here for as long as six years.

"Our government must enforce our borders; we've got plans in place to do so," Mr. Bush said on Thursday. "But part of enforcing our borders is to have a guest-worker program that encourages people to register their presence so that we know who they are, and says to them, if you're doing a job an American won't do, you're welcome here for a period of time to do that job."

Pollsters say the issue is still fluid among voters, although they expect public opinion to solidify during the coming debate in Congress and as Mr. Bush promotes his plan.

"He's got a very strong position with the bully pulpit," said David Winston, a Republican pollster, "but the dynamic of the issue at this point is that there is consensus around border security, but people have not come to a similar consensus about what to do with the 11 million in the country."

Two years ago, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that two-thirds of those surveyed said immigrants who had entered the country illegally should not be allowed to stay and work in the United States for three years, the initial period of stay in Mr. Bush's proposed guest-worker program. There was also little enthusiasm for any increase in immigration, with a plurality saying immigration should be decreased.

The poll was conducted shortly after Mr. Bush made his first major speech on his immigration plan.

"Many of you here today are Americans by choice, and you have followed in the paths of millions," Mr. Bush told a cheering, chanting crowd packed with Hispanic leaders in the East Room of the White House in January 2004. Every generation of immigrants, he added, "has reaffirmed the wisdom of remaining open to the talents and dreams of the world."

But critics said that Mr. Bush's guest-worker program did not go far enough, and that there was deportation, not a green card, at the end of the process. At the same time, his words angered many conservative Republicans, who said the plan amounted to amnesty.

Mr. Bush dropped his immigration proposals as too risky for his 2004 re-election campaign, but took them up again in 2005. By then, in an effort to calm conservatives, he had switched his tactics, emphasizing the national-security part of the plan.

"We're going to get control of our borders," he vowed in the East Room of the White House in October 2005 as he signed a $32 billion domestic security bill that had big increases for the Border Patrol.

This year, Mr. Bush has continued to push the issue and is closely watching what happens on Capitol Hill.

The House has passed an immigration bill that includes border security, not a guest-worker program. The action is now in the Senate, where it will resume next week.

There are a rash of competing immigration proposals on both sides, including one from Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, and another from Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. The majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, has threatened to offer his own border-security-only bill if the Senate cannot come up with legislation on its own.

    Bush Is Facing a Difficult Path on Immigration, NYT, 24.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/politics/24bush.html?hp&ex=1143262800&en=2054798197dfb9ef&ei=5094&partner=homepage



 

  1,889 days and no vetoes: Bush gaining on Jefferson
UT        22.3.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/
2006-03-22-bush-vetoes_x.htm

1,889 days and no vetoes: Bush gaining on Jefferson

Posted 3/22/2006 11:36 PM Updated 3/22/2006 11:50 PM
USA TODAY
By Richard Benedetto

WASHINGTON — President Bush Thursday becomes the longest-sitting president since Thomas Jefferson not to exercise his veto, surpassing James Monroe. (Related: Republicans work together)

Monroe was in office 1,888 days before he vetoed his first bill on May 4, 1822, a measure to impose a toll on the first federal highway. Jefferson never exercised his veto during two terms in 1801-09.

Thursday is Bush's 1,889th day in office, and no veto is in sight. As of Wednesday, Congress had sent him 1,091 bills. He signed them all.

Bush came close to a veto last month when Congress threatened to block a deal to turn over operations at ports in six states to a company owned by the Arab emirate of Dubai. He threatened a veto, but he avoided a showdown when the Dubai company decided to sell that part of its business to American interests.

"After that, we're not likely to hear a veto threat from him that much again," says G. Calvin Mackenzie, government professor at Maine's Colby College.

Some analysts say Bush's failure to use his veto shows an unwillingness to confront fellow Republicans who control Congress. "He doesn't want to fight battles unnecessarily and create a distance between himself and his party," says Mark Rozell, a George Mason University political scientist who has studied presidential vetoes.

Others say Bush's avoidance of the veto is a sign of strength. "Bush and his party are so close on most issues that there's no need to veto," Mackenzie says.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., scoffs at that: "This is a rubber-stamp Congress. Why would he veto anything?"

Still others say it is a matter of Bush's management style. "He's a CEO kind of guy. He gives his orders, delegates the negotiating to others and is willing to live with the outcome," says Robert McClure, a political scientist at Syracuse University's Maxwell School.

Bush has used veto threats to shape bills more to his liking. For example, the House wanted $370 billion for last year's highway bill; the Senate, $318 billion. Bush drew the line at $256 billion, then compromised at $286.4 billion, more than he wanted but far below the House and Senate levels.

Bush said Tuesday that the veto threat has helped him reduce the rate of domestic spending: "One reason why I haven't vetoed any appropriation bills is because they met the benchmarks we've set

    1,889 days and no vetoes: Bush gaining on Jefferson, UT, 22.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-22-bush-vetoes_x.htm

Bush signs debt limit increase to $8.965 trillion

Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:50 PM ET
Reuters

CLEVELAND (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday signed into law a $781 billion increase in U.S. borrowing authority, making the Treasury Department's new debt limit $8.965 trillion, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Last week, the Senate approved the increase in borrowing authority requested by the Treasury Department to avoid a government default. The U.S. House of Representatives approved the legislation nearly a year ago.

Bush was in Cleveland delivering a speech on Iraq on the third anniversary of the U.S.-led war.

    Bush signs debt limit increase to $8.965 trillion, R, 20.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-03-20T185010Z_01_N20270641_RTRUKOC_0_US-ECONOMY-DEBT-BUSH.xml

Bush: US must resist temptation to leave Iraq

Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:35 AM ET
Reuters
By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Saturday urged Americans to resist a temptation to retreat from Iraq but Democrats pressed him to offer a plan for drawing down U.S. troops and warned Iraq was moving closer to a civil war.

On the eve of the third anniversary of the launch of the war, Bush acknowledged setbacks and the prospect of more bloodshed in Iraq, where bodies are piling up amid waves of sectarian violence.

Bush used his weekly radio address to insist that despite "horrific" images in Iraq, progress was being made on the political and military fronts.

More than 2,300 U.S. troops have died since the start of the war, which Bush justified on warnings of a threat from the country's illicit weapons, but no such weapons were found.

Bush's approval ratings have plunged to around 35 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, in part because of anxiety over the war.

"These past three years have tested our resolve. We've seen hard days and setbacks," Bush said. But he said his administration was "fixing what has not worked."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, delivering the Democratic response, said the Bush administration "must show the American people that they do have a strategy to make the long overdue progress needed in Iraq, and show that they are ready to pursue it."

Citing a speech Bush gave on Monday in which he said Iraqi forces must take control of more of their country by this year's end, Feinstein said he "inched closer to the position held by Democrats and the American people."

But she said, "We still need to hear of a plan for making this happen."

Three years into the war, Feinstein said, Iraq "remains bitterly divided. Sectarian violence is on the rise. And each day civil war draws closer."

CIVIL WAR FEARS

Sectarian strife has raised worries of a civil war that could dent U.S. hopes of reducing the 133,000 American troops now in the country.

"More fighting and sacrifice will be required to achieve this victory, and for some, the temptation to retreat and abandon our commitments is strong," Bush said.

His radio address was part of a new push the White House began last week to try to shore up support for the war. Bush is to deliver a speech in Cleveland about Iraq on Monday.

Since the February 22 bombing of a major Shi'ite mosque, hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in reprisal attacks between Sunnis and Shi'ites, two of the country's main ethnic groups.

The U.S. military on Thursday carried out "Operation Swarmer," its largest air assault since the early days of the war in April 2003. As part of the operation, U.S. and Iraqi forces have been searching insurgent hideouts near Samarra, where the mosque bombing took place.

The offensive came as Iraq's deeply divided political leaders were struggling to form government after long delays.

Bush urged Iraqi leaders to develop a consensus as quickly as possible.

But Feinstein said Bush needed to "exercise the leadership necessary to bring Iraq's political factions together."

To do that, she said Bush must tell the Iraqis to "get their political house in order" by reconciling differences between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites, getting their government running, and securing their streets with a more effective police force.

She blamed the administration for "dangerous incompetence" that has made the situation in Iraq more difficult.

    Bush: US must resist temptation to leave Iraq, R, 18.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-03-18T163503Z_01_N18393676_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BUSH.xml

Judges Overturn Bush Bid to Ease Pollution Rules

March 18, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, March 17 — A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a clean-air regulation issued by the Bush administration that would have let many power plants, refineries and factories avoid installing costly new pollution controls to help offset any increased emissions caused by repairs and replacements of equipment.

Ruling in favor of a coalition of states and environmental advocacy groups, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the "plain language" of the law required a stricter approach. The court has primary jurisdiction in challenges to federal regulations.

The ruling by a three-judge panel was the court's second decision in less than a year in a pair of closely related cases involving the administration's interpretations of a complex section of the Clean Air Act. Unlike its ruling last summer, when the court largely upheld the E.P.A.'s approach against challenges from industry, state governments and environmental groups, the new ruling was a defeat for the agency and for industry, and a victory for the states and their environmentalist allies.

In the earlier case, a panel including two of the three judges who ruled on Friday decided that the agency had acted reasonably in 2002, when it issued a rule changing how pollution would be measured, effectively loosening the strictures on companies making changes to their equipment and operations.

But on Friday, the court said the agency went too far in 2003 when it issued a separate new rule that opponents said would exempt most equipment changes from environmental reviews — even changes that would result in higher emissions.

With a wry footnote to Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," the court said that "only in a Humpty-Dumpty world" could the law be read otherwise.

"We decline such a world view," said their unanimous decision, written by Judge Judith W. Rogers, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Judges David Tatel, another Clinton appointee, and Janice Rogers Brown, a recent Bush appointee, joined her.

The winners this time —more than a dozen states, including New York and California and a large group of environmental organizations — hailed the decision as one of their most important gains in years of litigation, regulation and legal challenges under the Clean Air Act.

The provision of the law at issue, the "new source review" section, governs the permits required at more than 1,300 coal-fueled power plants around the country and 17,000 factories, refineries and chemical plants that spew millions of tons of pollution into the air each year.

"This is an enormous victory over the concerted efforts by the Bush administration to dismantle the Clean Air Act," Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, whose office led the opposition from the states, said in an interview.

Mr. Spitzer, who is running for governor, said the ruling "shows that the administration's effort to misinterpret and undermine the statute is illegal."

Howard Fox, a lawyer for Earth Justice, which represented six environmental and health groups in the case, called the ruling "a victory for public health," adding, "It makes no sense to allow huge multimillion-dollar projects that drastically increase air pollution without installing up-to-date pollution controls."

The E.P.A. issued only a brief statement, saying: "We are disappointed that the court did not find in favor of the United States. We are reviewing and analyzing the opinion."

The decision is unlikely to be the last word; several circuit courts or appeals courts have considered or decided related cases, and the issue may eventually reach the Supreme Court. Some in Congress say the uncertainty demands an overhaul of the Clean Air Act itself, but there has been no real movement in that direction in recent years.

The new ruling addressed the administration's effort in 2003 to offer relief to energy companies that faced costly settlements of litigation brought by President Clinton's E.P.A. The agency proposed exemptions for companies whenever upgrades to their equipment amounted to less than 20 percent of the replacement cost of the equipment. In effect, that made perennial repairs of old equipment a more attractive alternative in many cases than its outright replacement.

Energy companies said the two rules the administration proposed in 2002 and 2003 would help them expand energy supplies at lower cost to consumers. But environmentalists said the change would result in just the kind of increased pollution that the law was intended to control.

The Clean Air Act calls for companies to build plants with up-to-date control technologies, and the new source provision was a way to ensure that as time goes by, pollution controls must be modernized along with the plants themselves.

Industry groups, which had challenged the first E.P.A. rule last year as not being flexible enough, were aligned with the agency this time. In general, they have been close partners with the Bush administration in environmental matters, pushing for greater economic considerations in the creation of any new policy.

The 20 percent threshold in the overturned rule would have enabled plant operators to make many repairs and upgrades without spending additional tens of millions of dollars for more advanced pollution controls. In settlements under the old rules, some companies faced costs of more than $100 million.

"This is a terrible decision," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a trade organization, arguing that the "any physical change" definition created financial instability for plant operators who spent as much as $800 million for a new boiler.

He and other industry leaders expressed hope that the court ruling might induce Congress to pass new legislation that would include New Source Review, a step that he said would make it easier for plant operators to plan for their future upgrades and investments.

John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, called the ruling "a significant setback to business efficiency" and environmental quality.

The government has 45 days to decide whether to seek a review of the ruling by the entire appeals court.

    Judges Overturn Bush Bid to Ease Pollution Rules, NYT, 18.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/18/politics/18enviro.html?ei=5094&en=881e45691d089a11&hp=&ex=1142744400&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1142658188-h67YunLwPbobFAacRxdZQA

John Deering        The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette        Cagle        17.3.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/deering.asp

R: George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States.

Bush sees Iran as possibly greatest threat

Posted 3/16/2006 6:54 AM Updated 3/16/2006 7:37 AM
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush said Thursday Iran may pose the greatest challenge to the United States and diplomacy to thwart the Islamic nation's nuclear program must prevail to avoid confrontation.

In a report released Thursday, the president reaffirmed the strike-first, or pre-emptive policy he first outlined in 2002.
Roger L. Wollenberg/pool, Getty images

In a 49-page national security report, the president reaffirmed the strike-first, or pre-emptive policy he first outlined in 2002. Diplomacy is the U.S. preference in halting the spread of nuclear and other heinous weapons, Bush said. (On Deadline: Read the National Security Strategy)

"If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self-defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur — even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack," Bush wrote.

"When the consequences of an attack with weapons of mass destruction are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize. ... The place of pre-emption in our national security strategy remains the same."

The White House plans to release the National Security Strategy report in conjunction with a speech that Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, is delivering at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

The report, Bush's second since becoming president, summarizes his strategy to protect the United States and improve U.S. relations with other nations. When he sent his first report to Congress — a year after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 — Bush was struggling to persuade U.S. allies to join an offensive to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Since then, the oppressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan was replaced by a freely elected government. Iraqis approved a constitution by referendum and nearly 12 million of them voted in an election for a permanent government.

Sectarian violence, however, threatens the fragile government in Iraq, where more than 2,300 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003.

"When the Iraqi government, supported by the coalition, defeats the terrorists, terrorism will be dealt a critical blow," Bush wrote in the report required by Congress.

In the report, Bush reproaches Russia and China and calls Syria a tyranny that harbors terrorists and sponsors terrorist activity.

On Russia, Bush said recent trends show a waning commitment to democratic freedoms and institutions. "Strengthening our relationship will depend on the policies, foreign and domestic that Russia adopts," he said.

The United States also is urging China to continue down a road of reform and openness.

"China's leaders must realize, however, that they cannot stay on this peaceful path while holding on to old ways of thinking and acting that exacerbate concerns throughout the region and the world."

He said these "old ways" include enlarging China's military in a non-transparent way, expanding trade, yet seeking to direct markets rather than opening them up, and supporting energy-rich nations without regard to their misrule or misbehavior at home or abroad.

    Bush sees Iran as possibly greatest threat, UT, 16.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-16-bush-national-security_x.htm

Bush battered by US pessimism, leadership doubts

Thu Mar 16, 2006 12:35 PM ET
Reuters
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deep doubts about the Iraq war and pessimism about America's future have shattered public confidence in President George W. Bush and helped drive his approval ratings to their lowest level ever, pollsters say.

As Bush launched a series of speeches to drum up support for the war, a new round of opinion polls found growing skepticism about Iraq and distrust of Bush. His image declined sharply, with one poll finding "incompetent" to be the most frequent description of his leadership.

Bush's approval rating dipped as low as 33 percent in one recent poll after a string of bad news for the White House, including uproars over a now-dead Arab port deal, a secret eavesdropping program, a series of ethics scandals involving high-profile Republicans and a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

The political storm has left Bush's second-term legislative agenda in tatters, threatened Republican control of the U.S. Congress in November's elections and shredded his personal image as an effective leader.

"His strong points as a president were being seen as personally credible, as a strong leader. That has all but disappeared," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, whose latest independent poll found a dramatic decline in Bush's credibility.

A majority of Americans, 56 percent, believe Bush is "out of touch," the poll found. When asked for a one-word description of Bush, the most frequent response was "incompetent," followed by "good," "idiot" and "liar." In February 2005, the most frequent reply was "honest."

"The transformation from being seen as honest to being seen as incompetent is an extraordinary indicator of how far he has fallen," Kohut said.

Bush's slump is deep enough to put Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives at risk, pollsters said. Democrats must gain 15 House seats and six Senate seats to regain power in each chamber.

"It's not the environment that we want to be running in," Republican pollster David Winston said. "Republicans can still hold the House and the Senate, but it's becoming increasingly more complicated."

In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 61 percent said the Iraq war would be a very important or the most important issue in deciding their vote for Congress. As the third anniversary of the invasion approaches, they preferred Democrats over Republicans in handling Iraq by 48 to 40 percent.

WAR 'A BIG ISSUE'

"I think it is a big issue," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said. "When the country is at war there is a certain unsettling that occurs with people around the country, as you might expect."

Boehner said the anxiety over Iraq was coloring the public's view on other issues like the economy, which he said is performing well.

"People don't look at the president's handling of the economy very well, and frankly I think it is a result of this anxiety over the fact that we are at war," he said.

A recent CBS poll found 66 percent of the public believed the country was headed down the wrong track, while a Harris Interactive poll put the number at 60 percent.

Views on Iraq and the war on terrorism were equally pessimistic, with 67 percent of respondents in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll saying Bush did not have a clear plan for handling Iraq.

Independent pollster Dick Bennett of American Research Group said Bush's failure to acknowledge public anxieties added to his troubles.

"The biggest problem the White House faces is reconnecting with people. People simply aren't buying it anymore," Bennett said. "People can see for themselves that things actually are not fine."

Bush's ratings are still above historical lows recorded since Gallup started presidential polling after World War Two.

The approval ratings for Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and the first George Bush, the current president's father, all dropped into the 20s.

    Bush battered by US pessimism, leadership doubts, R, 16.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-16T173505Z_01_N16347797_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-POLITICS.xml&archived=False

Bush Picks F.D.A. Chief, but Vote Is Unlikely Soon

March 16, 2006
The New York Times
By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON, March 15 — President Bush nominated Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach to serve as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday, but a dispute over the "morning after" contraceptive pill all but ensures that the nomination will go nowhere for months or even years.

A Bush family friend, Dr. von Eschenbach was appointed acting F.D.A. commissioner in September, when his predecessor abruptly resigned. He has led the National Cancer Institute since 2002 but now intends to resign from the institute, a spokeswoman said. With a nomination pending, Dr. von Eschenbach can lead the F.D.A. indefinitely.

Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington, both Democrats, have vowed to block any vote on Dr. von Eschenbach's nomination until the drug agency decides whether to allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B, an emergency contraceptive known as a morning-after pill. The senators support the Plan B application.

"If they don't come to a decision on Plan B," Ms. Murray said, "the White House is going to need a Plan C on their nominee."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said, "The administration will have to address the Plan B issue fair and square before he can be confirmed."

The Plan B application has been pending for three years. Anti-abortion groups oppose the application; abortion advocates support it.

The fight comes as the drug agency has been under attack for its inability to ascertain whether popular drugs can be safely taken for years and for approving drugs like the painkiller Vioxx that were later shown to cause heart attacks.

Some agency observers say that only a confirmed commissioner can make the changes needed to steady the organization, but it is unclear how much of a difference such a confirmation has on its day-to-day operations.

The Bush administration has had two confirmed commissioners whose combined service amounted to a year of the administration's five in office, and political observers predicted a long-term stalemate.

Norman J. Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said the administration would allow Dr. von Eschenbach's nomination to languish for years before doing anything that would anger its allies in the anti-abortion movement, as an approval for Plan B would.

"They are not going to enrage their base," Mr. Ornstein said.

The fight over Plan B has already prompted one independent government investigation, competing state legislative efforts, high-profile government resignations and what some observers say was a particularly nasty political double-cross.

While F.D.A. officials have insisted that their decisions to disapprove or delay the Plan B application have been driven by scientific or regulatory concerns, the Government Accountability Office found last year that top agency officials decided at one point to reject the application before its staff's scientific review was even complete.

Dr. Susan Wood resigned in August as director of the F.D.A.'s office of women's health to protest what she said was political interference in the agency's scientific deliberations.

The controversy began in 2003 when Barr Laboratories applied to switch Plan B, a prescription drug, to over-the-counter status. Advocates for women's health contend that easier access to the drug will reduce unwanted pregnancies. But anti-abortion activists say that Plan B, by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg, is equivalent to an abortion.

In December 2003, an F.D.A. advisory committee voted 23 to 4 to approve Barr's application with no age restrictions. The agency's scientific staff supported approval, but in May 2004 a top agency official overruled them and rejected the application, citing concerns about the pill's use by young teenagers.

Agency officials suggested to Barr that it rewrite its application to allow over-the-counter sales to adult women while still requiring young teenagers to get a prescription, according to internal agency documents. Barr submitted such an application in July 2004. In January 2005, the statutory deadline for an F.D.A. decision came and went without an announcement.

In February 2005, the Bush administration nominated Dr. Lester M. Crawford to become F.D.A. commissioner. Senators Clinton and Murray placed a "hold" on the nomination, saying they wanted a decision on Plan B, as drug agency rules required.

Senator Michael B. Enzi, Republican of Wyoming and chairman of the Senate health committee, brokered a compromise. After Michael O. Leavitt, the health and human services secretary, promised the senators that the agency would "act" on the Plan B application by September, Senators Clinton and Murray agreed to lift their holds. Dr. Crawford was confirmed in July.

In August, Dr. Crawford announced that the agency would delay a decision on Plan B indefinitely while it examined regulatory issues raised by the type of application that the F.D.A. itself had suggested.

Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Murray said they had been double-crossed. At a hearing in November, Ms. Murray all but called Mr. Leavitt a liar.

His voice rising, Mr. Leavitt replied that "the F.D.A. did act" on the Plan B application by deciding to delay a decision.

Then something unexpected happened: Dr. Crawford abruptly resigned, apparently the result of financial disclosure problems.

The administration announced that Dr. von Eschenbach would serve as acting commissioner while still leading the cancer institute. But the change also meant that the administration would have to seek Senate confirmation once more, and Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Murray said they would not be fooled again.

"This time around they are not going to get their nomination until a decision has been made," Ms. Murray said.

A hold on a nomination can be overcome only by a vote of the full Senate. Having spent considerable political clout to persuade Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Murray to allow a vote on Dr. Crawford's nomination, Mr. Enzi is unlikely to push for a similar deal this time, observers say.

    Bush Picks F.D.A. Chief, but Vote Is Unlikely Soon, NYT, 16.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/politics/16fda.html

Call for Censure Is Rallying Cry to Bush's Base

March 16, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, March 15 — Republicans, worried that their conservative base lacks motivation to turn out for the fall elections, have found a new rallying cry in the dreams of liberals about censuring or impeaching President Bush.

The proposal this week by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to censure Mr. Bush over his domestic eavesdropping program cheered the left. But it also dovetailed with conservatives' plans to harness such attacks to their own ends.

With the Republican base demoralized by continued growth in government spending, undiminished violence in Iraq and intramural disputes over immigration, some conservative leaders had already begun rallying their supporters with speculation about a Democratic rebuke to the president even before Mr. Feingold made his proposal.

"Impeachment, coming your way if there are changes in who controls the House eight months from now," Paul Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer, declared last month in an e-mail newsletter.

The threat of impeachment, Mr. Weyrich suggested, was one of the only factors that could inspire the Republican Party's demoralized base to go to the polls. With "impeachment on the horizon," he wrote, "maybe, just maybe, conservatives would not stay at home after all."

For weeks, Republicans have taken to conservative Web sites and talk radio shows to inveigh against the possibility, however remote, that Democrats could impeach Mr. Bush if they gained control of Congress. Mr. Feingold's censure proposal fell far short of a demand for impeachment. Most Democrats in the Senate distanced themselves from it, concerned that they would be tagged by Republicans as soft on terrorism. But the censure proposal provided Republicans an opening.

"This is such a gift," the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh told listeners on his syndicated radio program on Monday, saying the Democrats were fulfilling his predictions. "They have to go back to this impeachment thing," he said.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, a conservative standard-bearer, echoed the thought. "We'd like to congratulate the Wisconsin Democrat on his candor," its editors wrote Wednesday in a column headlined "The Impeachment Agenda." The Republican National Committee sent the editorial out to its e-mail list of 15 million supporters.

Brian Jones, a Republican spokesman, said the e-mail messages generated a higher response than anything the party had sent out in several months, including bulletins about the Supreme Court confirmations.

"Clearly on our side it is something that is energizing our base a little bit," Mr. Jones said.

"This is not about getting things done," he added. "This is raw partisan politics."

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Feingold declined to rule out supporting impeachment in the future, saying that the wiretapping "probably is the kind of thing the founding fathers thought of as high crimes and misdemeanors."

But Mr. Feingold also said he proposed the milder rebuke of censure instead of impeachment in part because of the context of the war and in part to avoid triggering a political backlash from Mr. Bush's supporters.

"They can try to turn this into their fantasy, but that is not how this comes off," Mr. Feingold said, noting that his proposal addressed only the narrow subject of the wiretapping program. "I didn't throw in Iraq or a lot of other things that frankly are pretty bad."

Still, conservatives said they welcomed the debate over censure or impeachment. Some said they were especially pleased with the timing of Mr. Feingold's proposal because it came just after the Democrats had upstaged the Republicans on national security during the outcry over an Arab company's takeover of several port terminals in the United States.

"They finally found the issue where they could convince the American people that they, too, see an enemy," Mr. Limbaugh said on his radio program.

"In less than two days they are back to the N.S.A. scandal as though we don't have a national security problem," he said, referring to the domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency.

In playing up the impeachment threat, conservatives have forged an alliance of sorts with the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party, where the idea has bounced around since the invasion of Iraq failed to find the banned weapons that the administration had described before the war.

Last year, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the panel when it weighed proceedings against President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, proposed an initial inquiry into a censure or impeachment of Mr. Bush over the war. So far, the Conyers proposal has attracted support from about two dozen of the chamber's 201 Democrats.

ImpeachPAC, a grass-roots group based in New York City that grew out of the last election, is agitating for the idea. In the last few months, local governments in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Arcata, Calif., and in several towns in Vermont have passed resolutions calling for impeachment. Harper's Magazine, the writer Garrison Keillor, the former Watergate figure John Dean, Barbra Streisand and the actor Richard Dreyfuss have expressed their support as well.

But other Democrats, mindful of the drubbing Republicans took over the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, have stepped carefully to avoid irking their most ardent supporters without endorsing the call for charges against Mr. Bush.

Asked recently about whether she would support a call for impeachment by her city, San Francisco, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, demurred.

"I have a full-time job here," Ms. Pelosi said. "But I will say this: Elections have ramifications. If they don't like the policies of our country, I encourage everyone to mobilize to change who is in power in Washington."

Few lawmakers in either party think there is much chance of impeachment even if the Democrats do take the House. Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called the idea "not realistic" but nonetheless useful. "It shows people how extreme the leaders of the Democrat Party actually are," Mr. Forti said.

With that in mind, Republicans have done what they can to amplify the liberals' talk. Three days after Mr. Weyrich warned that the possibility of impeachment was one of the few reasons for conservatives to go to the polls, the Cybercast News Service, a part of the conservative Media Research Center that provides material for talk radio hosts, reported that Mr. Dreyfuss had said in a speech at the National Press Club that impeaching Mr. Bush was a "cause worth fighting for."

Conservative Web sites and talk radio programs have lavished attention on the impeachment resolutions in California and Vermont for weeks, and for three days the Republican Party has sent radio hosts news bulletins suggesting Mr. Feingold's unpopular censure proposal actually revealed the true intent of his party. "Dem leaders support Feingold's folly," one headline read.

Mr. Weyrich, for his part, acknowledged that the prospect of impeachment seemed far-fetched at the moment. "It looked bizarre, too, when Father Robert F. Drinan and a handful of others, such as John Conyers Jr. in 1972 similarly were planning for the impeachment of President Nixon," he wrote in his newsletter. "When the moment of truth came, they were ready."

    Call for Censure Is Rallying Cry to Bush's Base, NYT, 16.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/politics/16impeach.html?hp&ex=1142571600&en=c0fe339030f1f4ad&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In Vermont, efforts to impeach Bush fan emotions

Wed Mar 15, 2006 12:08 PM ET
Reuters
By Jason Szep

NEWFANE, Vermont (Reuters) - Known for picturesque autumn foliage, colonial inns, maple sugar and laid-back villages, Vermont seldom makes much of an impact in national political debate.

But in one week, resolutions approved by five towns to impeach U.S. President George W. Bush are giving several sleepy Vermont communities a new, renegade image.

Not everyone is happy about it.

"We've got a lot of negative feedback -- letters coming in mail, e-mails, people telling us we're unpatriotic," said Maureen Albert-Piascik, treasurer of Newfane, a village of about 1,600 people which approved an impeachment article against Bush at its annual town meeting on March 7.

"All we were doing is exercising our freedom of speech," she said. "This little town can't be responsible for impeaching Bush, but everybody has the right to freedom of speech."

The residents' 121-29 vote at the town meeting called on the state's sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives, independent Rep. Bernie Sanders, to file articles of impeachment against Bush for misleading the nation on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and engaging in illegal wiretapping, among other charges.

"We've been let down by our politicians, by the media, so we really have to take things into our own hands," said Dan DeWalt, a 49-year-old woodworker and part-time teacher who drafted the impeachment call.

DeWalt's resolution inspired four other Vermont towns to do the same. "It struck a nerve," he said. "We need everyone in the country to consider, should we impeach the president."

Lenore Salzbrunn, a Republican who heads the Newfane Business Association, dismissed the impeachment resolution as a "tantrum" by just 10 percent of registered voters.

"We had a busload of people who they said they would not spend another dime in Newfane," he said. "They were so outraged. I've talked to about 80 people like that. People are saying things like 'Don't you realize we are at war?'"

OUTSIDE POLITICAL MAINSTREAM

The idea of impeaching Bush resides firmly outside the political mainstream. Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold's call this week to censure Bush -- a step short of an impeachment -- found scant support on Capitol Hill, even among fellow Democrats.

Harper's Magazine, a 158-year-old liberal publication, gave impeachment a push in a March cover story, and three of the 10 House members from Massachusetts signed a resolution calling for an investigation and possible impeachment of Bush.

In 2003, the city council in Santa Cruz, California voted to ask Congress to impeach Bush. Other California cities followed suit, including San Francisco last month. The declarations made local headlines, but even San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, joked about the minor national impact such calls have.

Bush, who says his domestic spying program is legal, has virtually no chance of being impeached due to a Republican majority in Congress, political analysts say.

Sanders, the Vermont congressman, said a far better goal is ending Republican dominance in Congress in November elections.

Bruce Harrington, a 73-year-old retired Newfane machinist who supported the impeachment vote, said he's had enough of Bush. He said the president is "just blowing money like it's going out of style."

Harrington said he cannot recall a bigger political fuss in Newfane, a heavily Democrat village founded by Puritan settlers in 1774 where most town meetings deal with routine issues such as electing school district officers.

DeWalt, who sports a graying beard and ponytail, is in his first year as a town selectman and says he is fielding calls from other towns on impeachment.

"Now I'm connected with people from across the country who are very methodically laying the groundwork to make this a reality, to make it not just a little pipe dream of a few wishful thinkers," he said.

(Additional reporting by Adam Tanner in San Francisco)

    In Vermont, efforts to impeach Bush fan emotions, R, 15.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=uri:2006-03-15T170758Z_01_N15240702_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-VERMONT-IMPEACH.xml&pageNumber=1&summit=

Bush Admits Rocky Start to Drug Plan

March 15, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

CANANDAIGUA, N.Y., March 14 — President Bush tried on Tuesday to tamp down complaints by retirees and pharmacists about the start of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, acknowledging that problems plagued its early days.

In an echo of speeches conceding errors in the responses to Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq reconstruction, and in which he insisted that the problems were being resolved, Mr. Bush told a group of pharmacists and Medicare participants here that he had expected that the program would have a rocky start.

"Any time Washington passes a new law, sometimes the transition period can be interesting," the president said.

That was something of an understatement. The White House was flooded with complaints about retirees who could not obtain their drugs at the promised discount, and independent pharmacists from Texas complained in recent days to Karl Rove, the president's deputy chief of staff and political strategist, that they had been forced to give out millions of dollars of prescription drugs and had not been reimbursed.

Mr. Rove was on the trip to this city, not far from Rochester, which Mr. Bush hailed as an example of a place that had straightened out the problems. He noted several programs were available to explain Medicare options.

"Take a look," Mr. Bush said to a group with many retirees. "One of the reasons I have come is to ask people who are eligible for Medicare just to explore the options."

The president also traveled here to sidestep a potential landmine. Democrats, who voted overwhelmingly against the drug program and have called it a giveaway to drug companies, hope to point to the troubles in enrolling beneficiaries in November.

Mr. Bush took with him Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who has been working to resolve the troubles that many patients have encountered. "We saw some long wait times," Dr. McClellan said.

Calls to 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) had just a few minutes of waiting, he said. White House officials said the availability of generic drugs had lowered the projected cost of the program, which is run by private health plans subsidized by Medicare.

    Bush Admits Rocky Start to Drug Plan, NYT, 15.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/politics/15bush.html

News Analysis

A Bush Alarm: Urging U.S. to Shun Isolationism

March 13, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, March 12 — The president who made pre-emption and going it alone the watchwords of his first term is quietly turning in a new direction, warning at every opportunity of the dangers of turning the nation inward and isolationist, and making the case for international engagement on issues from national security to global economics.

President Bush's cautions on the dangers of pulling back behind American borders — in trade and investment, in immigration and in his effort to make the spread of democracy the signature of his second term — first cropped up in his State of the Union address six weeks ago.

But it accelerated even before the Dubai ports deal was derailed by members of his own party, and before an unexpected uprising began among some neo-conservatives, who are now arguing that Iraq, while a noble effort, has turned into a failed mission that must be abandoned.

In interviews over the past week, Mr. Bush's aides, insisting on anonymity, they say, because they do not want to worsen the fissures, say they fear that the new mood threatens to undermine the international agenda for the rest of Mr. Bush's presidency.

"We're seeing it in everything," said one of Mr. Bush's closest aides last week. "Iraq. The ferocity of an irrational argument over the ports. Guest workers. China and India."

So starting on Monday, just a few days shy of the third anniversary of Mr. Bush's order to topple Saddam Hussein, the president will begin an effort to explain his Iraq strategy anew in the changed environment of increased sectarian killings.

He acknowledged on Saturday that "many of our fellow citizens" are "now wondering if the entire mission is worth it."

But rather than simply delve into the familiar talk about the need to root out terrorists abroad so they cannot strike Americans here, the White House plans to have Mr. Bush expand his discussion of the need for the United States to embrace a new role in the world, even if that means explaining the benefits of globalization to a nation that does not appear to be in a mood to hear that message.

It is yet another change for a man who came to office talking of a "humble foreign policy," and after Sept. 11 used the hammer of the world's sole superpower around the globe.

To his critics, the internationalist approach is too little too late — the price Mr. Bush has paid for a foreign policy that seemed relentlessly focused on building defensive walls and hunting enemies. A search of the White House Web site confirms that Mr. Bush, who in the days before he took office kept the take-no-prisoners speeches of Teddy Roosevelt on a table at his ranch, made little mention of "globalization" for much of his first five years in office, even when European leaders brought it up.

Asked once, several years ago, about his aversion to the topic, one of his senior aides said Mr. Bush associated the word with "mushy Clintonianism."

"It ranks up there with 'nation-building,' " he added.

No longer. Now Mr. Bush is moving into a new phase of his presidency, not by choice or natural inclination, it seems, but by necessity. Mr. Bush changed his tone on nation-building several years ago.

As the invasion turned to occupation, he emphasized the spread of democracy. But even that talk, especially during his re-election campaign, had a unilateralist subtext: the schools and polling places were open because the hammer of the American military made it possible.

His new theme is different, because it is all about interdependence. Two of his aides say the near defeat of the Central American Free Trade Agreement in Congress last summer — it passed by one vote, after arm-twisting by the president brought just enough Republicans back into the fold — jolted Mr. Bush into recognizing a new retreat from the world by his own party.

For the State of the Union address, Mr. Bush instructed his speechwriters to make global engagement a major theme, a big change for a man who ran in 2000 under the banner of a "humble foreign policy." In the speech, he warned that "the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting — yet it ends in danger and decline."

By the time he visited India earlier this month, he argued that while American jobs were often lost to outsourcing, "you don't retrench and pull back."

He said he had to convince Americans that "a 300-million-person market of middle-class citizens here in India" would soon be buying American goods.

"If we can make a product they want, then it becomes — at a reasonable price — and then all of a sudden, people will be able to have a market here," he said.

Mr. Bush's remarks may signal a halting emergence from a mind-set that, by his own acknowledgment, was set by 9/11. "There is a lot of on-the-job training in the modern presidency," said David J .Rothkopf, the author of "Running the World," a history of the National Security Council, and a Commerce Department official under President Clinton.

"Clinton ran on taking a tough line with China, and decided we needed China," Mr. Rothkopf said. "Bush came in with a philosophy that was almost neo-isolationist. When they dealt with Iraq, they did it alone — outside the context of what globalization implies. That's why the second term is the un-first term."

In the next few weeks, Mr. Bush will try to outmaneuver the next Dubai. On immigration, he is fighting in Congress to retain his guest-worker program rather than just strengthen the borders. When President Hu Jintao of China arrives here next month, Mr. Bush must once again do a delicate balancing act, convincing Congress that he is pressing China to close the $201 billion trade gap, while courting Beijing to help disarm North Korea and Iran.

But Iraq is the elephant on the White House lawn. Mr. Bush's speeches on Iraq are intended to shore up fast-ebbing public support, made worse by talk of civil war.

When Mr. Bush gave a set of speeches on Iraq in December, the calls to pull out were mostly from the left. Now, a rising chorus of neo-conservatives, who urged Mr. Bush to topple Mr. Hussein, say that, having liberated Iraq, the rest is up to the Iraqis.

"The administration has, now, to cope with failure," William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in February. "The kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat."

Briefing reporters on Friday about Mr. Bush's coming speeches, a senior White House official, speaking anonymously because he was describing speeches still being drafted, said Mr. Bush would answer those criticisms and "explain why we and the Iraqis must finish the job together." A year ago, Mr. Bush's allies took such statements as a given. Today, that is no longer the case.

    A Bush Alarm: Urging U.S. to Shun Isolationism, NYT, 13.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/13/politics/13prexy.html?hp&ex=1142226000&en=8ec91228649d8c1b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush says diplomacy way to tackle Iran atom threat

Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:56 AM ET
Reuters
By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday called Iran a "grave national security concern", but said he sought a diplomatic way to cap its nuclear goals.

A hardline Iranian cleric told a Friday prayers congregation in Tehran earlier that Bush was using the nuclear issue to further his goal of overthrowing the Islamic Republic.

The U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, will tackle Iran's case early next week after the U.N. nuclear watchdog sent it a report this week saying it could not verify that Iran's atomic activities were purely peaceful.

Bush said U.S. concerns were the result of Iran's stated desire to destroy Israel and Washington's belief that Tehran wants to build nuclear bombs -- something the Iranians deny.

"You begin to see an issue of grave national security concern," Bush told a newspaper group.

"Therefore it's very important for the United States to continue to work with others to solve these issues diplomatically, deal with these threats today," he said.

The Security Council will not rush into sanctions. It is likely first to urge Iran to accept International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demands that it halt all uranium enrichment work.

Iran, which has fought to avoid being taken to the council, suspects Bush is only using the nuclear issue as a pretext.

"Bush talks of regime change or change of its behavior, which is the same. It means no Islamic regime," said senior cleric Ahmad Khatami in a sermon in which he also denounced the European Union as a "puppet of U.S. policies".

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana spoke for the first time publicly of possible sanctions against Iran.

"I do not rule out sanctions, but it depends on what kind of sanctions they are," Austria's Der Standard daily quoted him as saying. "We certainly do not want to hurt the Iranian people."

However, asked if EU foreign ministers meeting in Salzburg would discuss the issue, he told reporters: "No. We are talking about a gradual approach to give some room still for diplomacy."

TARGETED SANCTIONS

British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to pursue Iran's case through the Security Council, saying a failure by Tehran to meet its global obligations would lead to "a serious situation".

European diplomats say that if Iran is impervious to U.N. demands, council measures might start with foreign travel bans and asset freezes aimed at Iranian leaders and their families.

The United States, which has its own sweeping sanctions in place against Iran, has pressed for tougher international action to isolate the Islamic Republic. Iran has threatened to retaliate by inflicting "harm and pain" on the West.

Bush said he assumed the threat was related to the U.S. need for imported energy resources. "For national security purposes we have got to become... not addicted to oil," he added.

The International Energy Agency said it would be able to plug the gap in global oil supply for several months if Iran, the world's No. 4 oil exporter, halted oil exports.

"The IEA would be capable of compensating for a number of months," President Claude Mandil said. "According to my knowledge, OPEC would not be able to compensate in totality."

The EU wants to keep the focus on the widely shared goal of stopping Iran acquiring nuclear bomb technology.

Ambassadors from the Security Council's five permanent members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- meet again on Friday to draft a statement the Western powers hope will be adopted by the 15-nation world body next week.

Russia and China strongly oppose sanctions on Iran.

"Our goal is political, not at all punitive," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said when asked about sanctions.

The EU, led by France, Britain and Germany, started talks with Iran in 2003 in the hope of convincing it to scrap uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for power plants or weapons, in exchange for economic and political incentives.

The talks collapsed in August after Iran ended a suspension of enrichment. The latest bid to revive them failed last Friday.

EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said there was still room for a negotiated solution based on a Russian proposal for Iran to enrich uranium on Russian soil.

Iran, which concealed its nuclear work from the IAEA for 18 years, insists on continuing some enrichment at home.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this week reiterated Moscow's opposition to hasty steps in the Iran crisis.

"As far as I know, the IAEA general director believes that the agency's role is far from being exhausted," he said in an interview with state-run Rossiya television on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Paul Taylor in Salzburg, Francois Murphy in Vienna, Jon Boyle in Paris, Alan Crosby in Prague, Sabina Zawadzki in Brussels, Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran and Oleg Shchedrov in Moscow)

    Bush says diplomacy way to tackle Iran atom threat, R, 10.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-10T165616Z_01_L10753163_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN.xml

Bush Says Political Storm Over Port Deal Sends Wrong Message

March 10, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:13 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Friday he was troubled by the political storm that forced the reversal of a deal allowing a company in Dubai to take over take over operations of six American ports, saying it sent a bad message to U.S. allies in the Middle East.

Bush said the United States needs moderate allies in the Arab world, like the United Arab Emirates, to win the global war on terrorism.

The president said he had been satisfied that security would be sound at the ports if the Dubai deal had taken effect. ''Nevertheless, Congress was still very much opposed to it,'' Bush said. He made his remarks to a conference of the National Newspaper Association, which represents owners, publishers and editors of community newspapers.

''I'm concerned about a broader message this issue could send to our friends and allies around the world, particularly in the Middle East,'' the president said. ''In order to win the war on terror we have got to strengthen our friendships and relationships with moderate Arab countries in the Middle East.''

''UAE is a committed ally in the war on terror,'' Bush added. ''They are a key partner for our military in a critical region, and outside of our own country, Dubai services more of our military, military ships, than any country in the world.

''They're sharing intelligence so we can hunt down the terrorists,'' Bush added. ''They helped us shut down a world wide proliferation network run by A.Q. Khan'' -- the Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, he said.

''UAE is a valued and strategic partner,'' he said. ''I'm committed to strengthening our relationship with the UAE.''

After a storm of protest in the Republican-controlled Congress, DP World announced Thursday that it would transfer six U.S. port operations to a U.S. entity. The moved spared Bush from a veto showdown with GOP lawmakers. Yet the larger issue highlighted by the DP world controversy -- U.S. port security -- shows no signs of going away.

''The problem of the political moment has passed, but the problem of adequate port security still looms large,'' Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said.

Republicans and Democrats alike welcomed DP World's decision to give up its aspirations to manage significant operations at the six ports, but they warned that the move doesn't negate the urgent need for broad legislation aimed at protecting America's ports.

''I'm sure that the decision by DP World was a difficult decision to hand over port operations that they had purchased from another company,'' Bush said.

''There are gaping holes in cargo and port security that need to be plugged,'' Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said.

The Bush administration also announced Friday that free trade talks with the United Arab Emirates were being postponed.

The talks, which were supposed to begin Monday, were postponed because both sides need more time to prepare, according to an announcement from the office of U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman. USTR spokeswoman Neena Moorjani refused to say whether the postponement was related to the controversy over the port operations.

Legislation on the issue has piled up in both the House and the Senate in the weeks since the flap over DP World erupted and divided Bush from the Republican-led Congress.

Before the United Arab Emirates-based company's announcement, the House and Senate appeared all but certain to block DP World's U.S. plan despite Bush's veto threats -- a message that GOP congressional leaders delivered personally to the White House.

Facing a disapproving public in an election year, a House committee overwhelmingly voted against the plan Wednesday. And House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., warned the president in a private meeting Thursday that the Senate inevitably would follow suit.

Within hours, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., one of the few members of Congress to back the administration's position on the issue, went to the Senate floor to read a statement from the company.

''DP World will transfer fully the U.S. operations ... to a United States entity,'' H. Edward Bilkey, the company's top executive, said in the statement. It was unclear which American business might get the port operations.

The White House expressed satisfaction with the company's decision.

''It does provide a way forward and resolve the matter,'' said Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary ''We have a strong relationship with the UAE and a good partnership in the global war on terrorism, and I think their decision reflects the importance of our broader relationship.''

The company's decision gives the president an out. He now doesn't have to back down from his staunch support of the company or further divide his party on a terrorism-related issue with a veto.

It was unclear how the company would manage its planned divestiture, and Bilkey's statement said its announcement was ''based on an understanding that DP World will not suffer economic loss.''

''This should make the issue go away,'' Frist said.

Even critics of the deal expressed cautious optimism that DP World's move would quell the controversy surrounding that company's plan to take over some U.S. terminal leases held by the London-based company it was purchasing.

''The devil is in the details,'' Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, echoing sentiments expressed by other lawmakers.

DP World on Thursday finalized its $6.8 billion purchase of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., the British company that through a U.S. subsidiary runs important port operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. It also plays a lesser role in dockside activities at 16 other American ports.

The plan was disclosed last month, setting off a political firestorm in the United States even though the company's U.S. operations were only a small part of the global transaction.

Republicans were furious that they learned of it from news reports instead of from the Bush administration. They cited concerns over a company run by a foreign government overseeing operations at U.S. ports already deemed vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Democrats also pledged to halt the takeover and clamored for a vote in the Senate. They sought political advantage from the issue by trying to narrow a polling gap with the GOP on issues of national security.

Senate Republicans initially tried to fend off a vote, and the administration agreed to a 45-day review of the transaction. That strategy collapsed Wednesday with the 62-2 vote in the House Appropriations Committee to thwart the sale.

    Bush Says Political Storm Over Port Deal Sends Wrong Message, NYT, 10.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Ports-Security.html?hp&ex=1142053200&en=a5948facb36a6c08&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Urges More Money for Religious Charities

March 10, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

COLLEGE PARK, Ga., March 9 — President Bush said Thursday that his administration had made progress by awarding more than $2.1 billion last year to social programs operated by churches, synagogues and mosques, a modest increase over 2004.

But Mr. Bush said that corporate foundations were not doing enough and that they should give more money to religious charities.

Mr. Bush made his comments at a conference in Washington organized by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives before leaving for a state Republican Party fund-raiser in Georgia.

"I am confident that the faith community is achieving unbelievable successes throughout our country," Mr. Bush said at the Washington Hilton. "And therefore I would urge our corporate foundations to reach beyond the norm, to look for those social entrepreneurs who haven't been recognized heretofore, to continue to find people who are running programs that are making a significant difference in people's lives."

Mr. Bush said that the White House had looked closely at 50 large foundations — he did not say which ones — and that one in five had charters that prohibited them from giving money to religious institutions for social service programs.

"I would hope they would revisit their charters," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush has made his religion-based initiative a central part of his "compassionate conservative" agenda since his first year in the White House, but has run into hurdles trying to carry it out.

Legislation that would have made it easier for religious charities to seek government money for social programs sputtered in Congress in Mr. Bush's first term. He bypassed Capitol Hill and signed executive orders that created religion-based offices in 10 agencies.

Mr. Bush signed an executive order this week to establish a religion-based office in an 11th agency, the Homeland Security Department.

Mr. Bush has long said the directives, which removed barriers for religious groups that sought federal money for programs that help prisoners, the homeless, addicts and others, were necessary because religious charities have been denied government money simply because they were religious.

His critics have said Mr. Bush was using taxpayer money to promote organized religion and breaking down barriers between church and state.

In College Park, Mr. Bush perfunctorily recognized Ralph Reed, a former head of the Christian Coalition and a top Bush campaign adviser whose Georgia candidacy for lieutenant governor has been tarnished by ties to Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist.

Mr. Reed, who was in the ballroom at the Georgia International Convention Center at the state party's annual Presidents' Day dinner, did not appear onstage with Mr. Bush. Other Republicans did, among them Gov. Sonny Perdue, who is facing two aggressive Democratic challengers.

Mr. Bush also appeared with Max Burns and Mac Collins, two former House members who are trying to unseat Democratic incumbents.

Mr. Bush mentioned Mr. Reed briefly, along with another Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Casey Cagle. "I appreciate them both being here," Mr. Bush said.

    Bush Urges More Money for Religious Charities, NYT, 10.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/politics/10bush.html

Bush signs Patriot Act renewal

Thu Mar 9, 2006 10:29 PM ET
Reuters
By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush signed a renewal of the USA Patriot Act on Thursday, hailing it as vital to the war on terrorism, but a key congressional critic said it lacked adequate safeguards for civil liberties.

Passage had been blocked for months by a battle with Congress over how to balance Americans' right to privacy with a need to foil security threats in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks that gave rise to the original Patriot Act.

The White House won approval from lawmakers after agreeing to revisions along with a companion bill that sponsors said would better protect civil liberties under the act.

The fight came down to the wire, with the bill reaching Bush's desk as 16 major provisions of the old law were due to expire on Friday.

The White House signing ceremony came against the backdrop of a move to end a political firestorm over Bush's support for a state-owned Arab company taking over U.S. port operations.

Dubai Ports World pledged on Thursday to transfer operation of six U.S. port terminals to a U.S. entity, a move the White House said should settle the controversy surrounding the deal.

Critics had pointed to the contrast between Bush's hawkish stance in his push for the Patriot Act's extension and what they saw as a lax view of security risks in the ports deal.

Enacted shortly after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the Patriot Act expanded powers to obtain private records, conduct wiretaps and searches and share information. Critics said it went too far in infringing on basic rights.

Saying that "America remains a nation at war," Bush called renewal of the act essential. "It will improve our nation's security while we safeguard the civil liberties of our people," he said.

Bush's signature made 14 of the Patriot Act's provisions permanent and extended two others by four years. He said renewal allowed law enforcement to continue "pursuing terrorists with the same tools they use against other criminals."

'DEEPLY FLAWED'

Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who led opposition to renewal, called the bill "deeply flawed."

"Today marks, sadly, a missed opportunity to protect both the national security needs of this country and the rights and freedoms of its citizens," he said in a statement.

Feingold vowed to continue efforts to enact more safeguards on civil liberties.

Addressing Republicans in Georgia later on Thursday, Bush defended his administration's controversial program of domestic spying, saying it had been limited in scope and aimed at eavesdropping on al Qaeda operatives.

Bush, whose approval ratings have been hovering near the lows for his presidency, pressed national security as a key theme for his party in this election year, saying that "our biggest job" was to protect Americans against threats.

Republicans seeking to polish their national security credentials before November's midterm congressional elections said renewal of the Patriot Act was needed to help law enforcement agencies protect America from further attacks.

Legislation had been held up by Democrats and a few Republicans who demanded greater assurances on rights. A compromise won final congressional approval on Tuesday.

One change clarifies that libraries will not be subjected to federal subpoenas issued without the approval of a judge. Another removes a proposed requirement that recipients of such subpoenas provide the FBI with the names of their lawyers.

A third allows individuals to challenge gag orders when they have been subpoenaed to produce personal information. They would have to wait a year to do so.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in College Park, Georgia, and Thomas Ferraro in Washington)

    Bush signs Patriot Act renewal, R, 9.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-10T032934Z_01_N09230424_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-PATRIOT.xml

 

White House sticks to ports veto threat

Thu Mar 9, 2006 12:31 PM ET
Reuters
By Steve Holland and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House warned on Thursday that rebellious House of Representatives Republicans could jeopardize funding for Iraq, Afghanistan and hurricane rebuilding if they attach a bid to stop the Dubai ports deal to emergency spending legislation.

The White House refused to back away from a veto threat against legislation that would stop the deeply unpopular plan for a state-owned Arab company to take over management of six U.S. ports, and said talks were under way aimed at a compromise with Congress.

"We'd be concerned about attempts to address the ports transaction in any emergency legislation because it could slow down passage of vital funds and resources for the efforts I just mentioned," McClellan said.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved on a vote of 62-2, an amendment that would block the state-owned United Arab Emirates company Dubai Ports World from managing terminals at the American ports.

By attaching the amendment to a must-pass spending bill, Republicans were essentially calling Bush's bluff on whether he was really prepared to carry out what would be the first veto of his presidency in order to save the ports deal.

McClellan said the spending bill included vitally needed money for Iraq, Afghanistan and Gulf Coast rebuilding.

Dubai Ports World said on Thursday it had completed its acquisition of Britain-based ports-management company P&O but would hold U.S. port operations "separate" while a U.S. security review of the contract is carried out.

Since word of the deal broke last month, lawmakers have complained about security risks if ports management was turned over to firms from countries that in the past were sympathetic to terrorist activities.

At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it would be a mistake "if people went away with the impression that this country (Dubai) is in any way anything other than very helpful to us in the global war on terror."

"The White House I know is working with the Congress to try to find a way to sort through this issue in a manner that's acceptable," he said.

BUSH MEETS REPUBLICAN LEADERS

It was not immediately clear if the ports deal came up in a White House meeting between Bush and Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican.

But McClellan said White House officials were engaged in talks with members of Congress and company representatives on how to salvage the deal, including changes in the process that gave birth to it.

That may not be enough.

Inspired to act immediately after the House committee's vote, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York offered a measure to block the ports deal as an amendment to a bill on the Senate floor that would change the way lobbyists operate in Washington.

But Frist, who has vowed to oppose consideration of any such measure during an ongoing 45-day review of the ports agreement, introduced a motion to end debate on the lobby bill -- and effectively eliminate Schumer's amendment.

Schumer pleaded with colleagues to allow his amendment to come to a vote now. "We have to deal with the Dubai ports issue. Not in April or May, but now," Schumer declared.

But Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and also a strong critic of the ports deal, said the Senate needed to move ahead and finish the lobbying bill first. "Let's get on with the task before us," she said.

A vote could come on Frist's motion later on Thursday afternoon. Because the lobby legislation requires a change a Senate rules, Frist needs a super-majority of 67 votes in the 100-member Senate to succeed with his motion to end debate.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro and Tabassum Zakaria)

    White House sticks to ports veto threat, R, 9.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-03-09T173054Z_01_N09169509_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-PORTS.xml

G.O.P. Senators and Bush Reach Wiretap Accord

March 8, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, March 7 — Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.

The agreement, hashed out in weeks of negotiations between Vice President Dick Cheney and Republicans critical of the program, dashes Democratic hopes of starting a full committee investigation because the proposal won the support of Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. The two, both Republicans, had threatened to support a fuller inquiry if the White House did not disclose more about the program to Congress.

"We are reasserting Congressional responsibility and oversight," Ms. Snowe said.

The proposed legislation would create a seven-member "terrorist surveillance subcommittee" and require the administration to give it full access to the details of the program's operations.

Ms. Snowe said the panel would start work on Wednesday, and called it "the beginning, not the end of the process."

"We have to get the facts in order to weigh in," she said. "We will do more if we learn there is more to do."

The agreement would reinforce the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created in 1978 to issue special warrants for spying but was sidestepped by the administration. The measure would require the administration to seek a warrant from the court whenever possible.

If the administration elects not to do so after 45 days, the attorney general must certify that the surveillance is necessary to protect the country and explain to the subcommittee why the administration has not sought a warrant. The attorney general would be required to give an update to the subcommittee every 45 days.

Democrats called the deal an abdication of the special bipartisan committee's role as a watchdog, saying the Republicans had in effect blessed the program before learning how it worked or what it entailed.

"The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House," said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is vice chairman of the panel.

The House Intelligence Committee said last week that it would seek limited briefings for some panel members so that they could weigh changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but the Republican leaders of the House committee stopped far short of proposing the kind of continuing oversight and rules changes that the Senate committee has settled on. A spokeswoman for the White House, Dana Perino, called the Republican senators' proposal "a generally sound approach."

"We're eager to work with Congress on legislation that would further codify the president's authority," Ms. Perino said. "We remain committed to our principle, that we will not do anything that undermines the program's capabilities or the president's authority."

Republicans on the committee, however, emphasized the administration's resistance to the accord. Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee and helped broker the deal, called it "the agreement we insisted upon."

Ms. Snowe said the proposal had met "considerable reluctance" from the White House in negotiations.

The committee had scheduled a vote on a full investigation for Tuesday afternoon if there was no accord with the White House to disclose more about the program. As of midday, no resolution had been reached.

Mr. Hagel said the group worked out the last-minute deal in long telephone calls with Mr. Cheney; the White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers; and Stephen J. Hadley, the assistant to the president for national security.

The proposed bill would allow the president to authorize wiretapping without seeking a warrant for up to 45 days if the communication under surveillance involved someone suspected of being a member of or a collaborator with a specified list of terrorist groups and if at least one party to the conversation was outside the United States.

The administration has provided some information in confidential briefings to a "Gang of Eight" lawmakers made up of the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate, as well as their respective Intelligence Committees. Republican sponsors of the proposal said the new subcommittees would greatly improve lawmakers' ability to obtain digest information because the staffs for the first time would have access to it.

Senator Mike DeWine, the Ohio Republican who helped draft the proposal, said it would bring the program "into the normal oversight of the Senate intelligence committee."

But Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, compared the proposed bill to a doctor's diagnosis of an unexamined patient.

"Congress doesn't have that great a history in reforming programs it knows a lot about," Mr. Wyden said. "Here Congress is trying to legislate in the dark."

Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, the majority leader, issued a statement supporting the proposal.

It is not clear whether all the Republican critics will back the deal. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said Congress should seek a court ruling on the legitimacy of the program in addition to new oversight.

In a separate Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Specter said, "We're having quite a time in getting responses to questions as to what has happened with the electronic surveillance program."

He said he put the administration "on notice" he might seek to block its financing if Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales did not give more information.

Mr. Specter said in statement later that he hoped for a solution that would avoid resorting to such an extreme action.

    G.O.P. Senators and Bush Reach Wiretap Accord, NYT, 8.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/politics/08nsa.html?hp&ex=1141880400&en=7402b982a1503c71&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush to ask Congress for line-item veto power

Sun Mar 5, 2006 10:04 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will soon make a formal request to Congress for a line-item veto -- authority that would give him power to cancel specific spending items in budget bills, an administration official said on Sunday.

Many presidents have sought such authority on the argument it would help cut down on wasteful spending in the budget. In a rare yielding of some of its powers of the purse strings, Congress passed legislation granting a line-item veto to President Bill Clinton.

The Supreme Court struck down the law in 1998, ruling by a vote of 6-3 that Congress did not have the authority under the Constitution to give the president that power.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not wish to be seen as pre-empting the president's announcement, said that Bush would transmit to Congress a proposal with language aimed at withstanding a Supreme Court challenge.

Bush plans to announce his intention to draw up a proposal on the line-item veto on Monday morning during a ceremony to swear in the new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Edward Lazear, the official said.

Bush, who has never vetoed a spending bill, has been criticized by many conservatives for the surge in federal expenditures on his watch. Republicans worry the record deficits could hurt them in this year's midterm elections in which Democrats are seeking to regain control of one or both houses of Congress.

The Bush administration has forecast a fiscal 2007 budget deficit of $439 billion, an all-time high.

The lobbying scandal involving Jack Abramoff and the conviction of former California Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham on bribery charges have put a spotlight on budget earmarks -- targeted spending items often added to unrelated spending bills.

Bush called in his State of the Union address for a line-item veto but did not offer specifics. He has also said he wants to see Congress put limits on earmarks.

    Bush to ask Congress for line-item veto power, R, 5.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-03-06T030423Z_01_N05205572_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-BUDGET-VETO.xml

Bush Says Pakistan Cannot Expect Nuclear Deal Like One With India

March 4, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and CARLOTTA GALL

ISLAMABAD, March 4 -- President Bush made clear today that Pakistan should not expect anytime soon a civilian nuclear agreement like the one the United States reached only days ago with India, and he bluntly said that the two archrivals on the subcontinent cannot be compared to each other.

Mr. Bush said that he and Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, had discussed a civilian nuclear program for Pakistan during talks this morning.

“I explained that Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories," Mr. Bush said at a joint outdoor news conference with Mr. Musharraf on the grounds of the presidential palace, Aiwan-e-Sadr. “So as we proceed forward, our strategy will take in effect those well-known differences."

Mr. Bush had never been expected to endorse a nuclear agreement with Pakistan, the country of A.Q Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program who has confessed to running the largest illegal nuclear proliferation network in history. But it was striking that the president spoke so directly as his host, Mr. Musharraf, stood at his side.

Critics of Mr. Bush’s nuclear agreement with India say that it will only encourage other nations to demand similar arrangements. Under the terms of the Indian pact, the United States would end a decades-long moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components and India would separate its civilian and military nuclear programs, and open the civilian facilities to international inspections.

Before Mr. Bush’s remarks, administration officials had said that Mr. Musharraf had no chance of making such a deal because proliferation and terrorism remain concerns in Pakistan.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, struggled to answer local journalists who asked if Pakistan had not been left empty-handed after the visit. Speaking at a news briefing this afternoon to release the joint statement issued by both presidents, he said Mr. Musharraf had pressed the case for civil nuclear cooperation, since Pakistan had urgent energy needs. "These things take a long time," he said. President Bush had hinted at something, he said, but he declined to explain further.

Mr. Bush nonetheless strongly supported Mr. Musharraf’s efforts in combating militants, even though Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, are believed to still be hiding in Pakistan near the Afghan border.

”Part of my mission today was to determine whether or not the president is as committed as he has been in the past to bringing these terrorists to justice, and he is," Mr. Bush said. “He understands the stakes, he understands the responsibility and he understands the need to make sure our strategy is able to defeat the enemy."

Mr. Bush and Mr. Musharraf made their remarks on the serene lawn of Aiwan-e-Sadr, with ducks splashing in a flower-filled pool in the background, as the capital around them remained in an effective 24-hour lockdown. Security was intense for the first visit of an American president in six years, and the first by Mr. Bush, who was in essence traveling to Mr. bin Laden’s backyard two days after a suicide bombing attack in the southern city of Karachi left four dead, including an American Embassy employee.

Mr. Musharraf said he had expressed Pakistan’s deepest regrets in his talks with Mr. Bush about the bombing, which he said was very viciously timed to spoil Mr. Bush’s visit. Mr. Bush said that he sent his condolences to the family of David Foy, the embassy employee killed in the attack, as well as to the families of the Pakistanis who died.

”We’re not going to back down in the face of these killers," Mr. Bush said. “We’ll fight this war and we will win this war together."

Mr. Kasuri said that Mr. Musharraf had made a "comprehensive and telling response" to American concerns of Pakistan's commitment to fighting terrorism. "They had a level of discussion I had not seen before," he said, adding that Mr. Musharraf shared intelligence and documentary evidence with Mr. Bush. Pakistan had had to deal with 30,000 foreign fighters passing through from Afghanistan over the years, had more troops in the border areas than foreign and Afghan forces together on the other side, and had lost 600 soldiers in fighting in Waziristan, he said.

Mr. Bush, who said only last week in Washington that Pakistan still has some distance to travel on the road to democracy, made a gentle reference today to the need for democratic advances in the country, saying that elections scheduled for next year need to be open and honest. Mr. Musharraf, who seized power in 1999 in a bloodless coup, had promised to give up his military uniform in 2004, but changed the constitution so that he could hold both his army post and the presidency until 2007.

Throughout the day, the streets of Islamabad were peaceful, with the main rally planned for the adjoining city of Rawalpindi curtailed after the political leader Imran Khan was placed under house arrest.

But people in Islamabad showed a lack of excitement over the visit and did not glance at the live coverage of the news conference held by the two presidents on television in the shopping mall.

“I do not think the visit will make much difference," said Naser Abbasy, 37, who runs a clothes store in Islamabad.

His brother, Rashid Mehmud Abbasy, 35, was wearing a black armband in protest of Mr. Bush’s visit. “It is a protest, because of all the atrocities against Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere," he said.

It is not about the president, but his policies, he said. The Muslim leaders had called on supporters to wear black armbands, he said.

But Mr. Abbasy said the visit would be beneficial if it gave Mr. Bush a better understanding of the views of Pakistanis. “He gave a lot to India, despite knowing that we do not get on well," he said. “So he should support us equally."

Middle class shoppers were more ready to see the good in the visit, even if the security lockdown had caused irritation. “That kind of recognition is good," said Ambreen Mirza, 28, a psychologist shopping for DVD’s. But she voiced the reservations that some people feel. “Most people dislike his policies," she said. “Pakistanis were gripped by a fear that the U.S. is friend now but one that we will lose, which has happened before."

Resentment against the cartoons in some Western publications depicting the Prophet Muhammad was still uppermost in people’s minds.

“In all my life I never heard of insults being made to the Prophet," said Muhammad Pervez, 55, sitting drinking tea with a shopkeeper. “We respect the Holy Books of other religions, so it is unimaginable to insult our prophet and out book. He is so powerful, President Bush could say something to stop the cartoons or punish those responsible. So our dislike for him has grown because of this cartoon incident."

    Bush Says Pakistan Cannot Expect Nuclear Deal Like One With India, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/international/asia/04cnd-pakistan.html?hp&ex=1141534800&en=fd6e253a355720de&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Us-Pakistan Joint Statement

March 4, 2006
For Immediate Release
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary

JOINT STATEMENT

United States-Pakistan Strategic Partnership

President Bush and President Musharraf have affirmed the long-term, strategic partnership between their two countries. In 2004, the United States acknowledged its aspirations for closer bilateral ties with Pakistan by designating Pakistan as a Major Non-NATO Ally. The U.S.-Pakistan strategic partnership is based on the shared interests of the United States and Pakistan in building stable and sustainable democracy and in promoting peace and security, stability, prosperity, and democracy in South Asia and across the globe.

The two leaders are determined to strengthen the foundation for a strong, stable, and enduring relationship. This will require a significant expansion of U.S.-Pakistan bilateral economic ties, including mutual trade and investment. As a key step in this direction the United States and Pakistan are making meaningful progress toward concluding a Bilateral Investment Treaty.

Both leaders commit to working together with Afghanistan to make Pakistan and Afghanistan a land bridge linking the economic potentials of South Asia and Central Asia.

The American people feel profound sympathy for the victims of the tragic earthquake that struck on October 8, 2005. President Bush reaffirmed the United States' determination to stand by the Pakistani people as they recover and rebuild.

President Bush and President Musharraf reaffirm their condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Following the September 11 attacks, the United States and Pakistan joined international efforts to fight the scourge of terrorism. President Bush is grateful for President Musharraf's strong and vital support in the war on terror. The two leaders underscored the need for a comprehensive strategy for addressing the threat of terrorism and extremism. President Bush and President Musharraf will continue to work together to address political injustice, poverty, corruption, ignorance, and hopelessness. They resolve to maintain their close counterterrorism cooperation and to increase their efforts to reduce the threat of terrorism regionally and internationally.

The two leaders recognize the need to promote tolerance, respect and mutual understanding, and inter-faith harmony to strengthen appreciation of the values and norms common to the world's religions and cultures. The two leaders acknowledge with appreciation the various international initiatives in this regard including President Musharraf's concept of Enlightened Moderation. The two leaders agreed that acts that disturb inter-faith harmony should be avoided.

President Bush and President Musharraf support the peace process and composite dialogue between Pakistan and India for improvement of relations and resolution of disputes and building a better future in South Asia.

Both leaders share concern about the threat to global stability posed by the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the threat of terrorist groups acquiring such weapons. President Bush and President Musharraf commit to play leading roles in international efforts to prevent the proliferation of WMD, their delivery systems, and related technology and expertise.

STRATEGIC DIALOGUE

President Bush and President Musharraf are launching a Strategic Dialogue under the Strategic Partnership. The Dialogue will be co-chaired by the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Pakistan's Foreign Secretary. They will meet regularly to review issues of mutual interest.

In implementation of the strategic partnership, President Bush and President Musharraf commit both countries to undertake the following steps in the areas of economic growth and prosperity, energy, peace and security, social sector development, science and technology, democracy, and non-proliferation:

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROSPERITY

* Establish and implement strong financial sector controls that can defend against illicit finance.

* Facilitate Pakistan's economic growth through increased trade and investment links with the United States and within the region and the global economy, including through an enhanced economic dialogue encompassing bilateral cooperation for Pakistan's economic development, regional economic cooperation, and the global economy.

* The United States will provide financial support for the establishment of a Center for Entrepreneurship in Pakistan under the Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) Initiative. The Center will promote entrepreneurial training and skills development to young women and men to launch business initiatives that would generate employment opportunities.

ENERGY COOPERATION

* Hold a High-Level Energy Meeting to inaugurate an energy working group, which will explore ways to meet Pakistan's growing energy needs and strengthen its energy security.

* Work together to develop public and private collaboration on a broad range of energy sources.

PEACE AND SECURITY

* Build a robust defense relationship that advances shared security goals, promotes regional stability, and contributes to international security.

* Continue robust U.S. security assistance to meet Pakistan's legitimate defense needs and bolster its capabilities in the war on terror.

* Deepen bilateral collaboration in the fields of defense training, joint exercises, defense procurement, technology transfers, and international peacekeeping.

* Decide to increase the frequency of defense policy discussions to strengthen collaboration in the identified sectors.

* Work together to ensure the maintenance of peace, security, and stability in the South Asia region and beyond.

* Cooperate closely in international institutions, including bodies of the United Nations, on matters of mutual concern.

SOCIAL SECTOR DEVELOPMENT

* Continue U.S. support in the health sector through collaborative projects and programs.

* Reinforce Pakistan's efforts to reform and expand access to its public education through continuing U.S. cooperation.

* Encourage educational programs and greater interaction and linkages between the research and academic institutions of the two countries.

* Promote exchange of students and scholars, fellowship programs, and strengthened research collaboration, including through institutional support for higher education and training.

* Establish a wide-ranging High Level Dialogue on Education to enhance and strengthen cooperation in the education sector.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

* Build capacity in Pakistan and work toward increased cooperation in science, technology, and engineering.

* Improve the quality, relevance, or capacity of education and research at Pakistan's institutions of higher education in the field of science and technology.

* Establish Pakistan-U.S. Joint Committee on Science and Technology to develop collaborative activities and relationships between the scientific and technological communities and institutions of both countries.

* Enhance institutional capacity of Pakistan in the area of environment through exchange of experts and developing linkages and collaborative projects with relevant U.S. institutions.

EMOCRACY

* Support Pakistan as it develops strong and transparent democratic institutions and conducts free and fair elections to ensure sustainable democracy.

NON-PROLIFERATION

* Support Pakistan's non-proliferation efforts and strengthen its capabilities, by:

o Supporting Pakistan's measures for implementation of its new export control law, including adoption of enforcement regulations and establishment of a new export licensing body; and

o Providing U.S. assistance through the Department of Energy's Second Line of Defense Program (Megaports) and the Department of Homeland Security's Container Security Initiative.

PRESIDENTIAL VISIT

* President Bush thanked President Musharraf and the people of Pakistan for the generous reception and warm hospitality accorded to him, Mrs. Laura Bush, and members of the Presidential delegation during their stay in Pakistan.

    Us-Pakistan Joint Statement, White House, 4.3.2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060304-1.html

Bush Plan Would Raise Deficit by $1.2 Trillion, Budget Office Says

March 4, 2006
The New York Times
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, March 3 — President Bush's budget would increase the federal deficit by $35 billion this year and by more than $1.2 trillion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Friday.

The nonpartisan budget office said that Mr. Bush's tax-cutting proposals would cost about $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years and that his proposals to partly privatize Social Security would cost about $312 billion during that period.

The office also said Mr. Bush's proposals to save money on Medicare, Medicaid and most nonmilitary programs would offset about one-third of the cost of his other proposals.

The report comes as Republican leaders in Congress prepare to settle on their own budget for next year, which could differ substantially from Mr. Bush's. They are already running into political and economic obstacles as they try to extend Mr. Bush's tax cuts, pay for the war in Iraq and squeeze spending on antipoverty programs, education and most other areas of nonmilitary spending.

Senate Republicans, nervous about their prospects in this fall's midterm elections, are balking at Mr. Bush's proposal to trim $36 billion over five years from Medicare, the government health program for the elderly.

House and Senate leaders remain bogged down over a limited extension of Mr. Bush's tax cut for stock dividends, and Senate Republicans have repeatedly failed in efforts to permanently repeal the estate tax.

At first blush, the Congressional Budget Office's report appears optimistic because it envisions that the budget deficit will slowly decline from $371 billion this year as economic growth generates more revenue and as Mr. Bush's budget cuts take effect.

Measured as a share of the total economy, the budget deficit would decline to about 1 percent in 2011 from 2.8 percent this year. Though the government would still be borrowing money each year, the annual deficit would be low by historical standards.

But the budget office noted that it had not included money for military costs in Iraq and Afghanistan after this year. The Bush administration has asked for a total of $92 billion in supplemental spending this year for those efforts.

Mr. Bush's budget also omits any cost for preventing a huge expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax that is expected to engulf tens of millions of people over the next several years.

Mr. Bush's budget assumes that the government will reap well over $1 trillion from the alternative minimum tax over the next decade, but Republicans and Democrats alike have vowed to prevent that from happening.

The optimistic outlook also assumes that Congress freezes or cuts the vast majority of discretionary government programs outside of military and domestic security ones.

Mr. Bush's 2007 budget would cut $2.1 billion next year from education, which had been one of the president's areas for increased spending. It would also cut money for community development block grants, low-income housing, child-support enforcement against deadbeat fathers and scores of other programs with support in Congress.

    Bush Plan Would Raise Deficit by $1.2 Trillion, Budget Office Says, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/politics/04budget.html

In India, Bush Urges Americans to Welcome Global Competition

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

NEW DELHI, March 3 — President Bush met with Indian entrepreneurs and toured an agricultural university during a four-hour trip to the southern city of Hyderabad today, when he said that the United States should welcome rather than fear competition from India.

"People do lose jobs as a result of globalization and it's painful for those who lose jobs," Mr. Bush said at meeting with young entrepreneurs at Hyderabad's Indian School of Business, one of the premier schools of its kind in India. Nonetheless, the president said, "globalization provides great opportunities."

Mr. Bush, reiterating a theme of his trip, strongly defended the outsourcing of American jobs to India as the reality of a global economy, and said that the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods. Hyderabad is a center of India's booming high-tech industry, and was also on President Bill Clinton's itinerary when he visited India in 2000.

"The classic opportunity for our American farmers and entrepreneurs and small businesses to understand is there is a 300 million-person market of middle class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want, that it becomes viable," Mr. Bush said at the business school.

At an earlier stop at Hyderabad's Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, Mr. Bush watched Indian women in saris hand-till the soil around tomatoes, peanuts and soybeans. One of the women gave Mr. Bush a thumbs'-up sign as he walked past. The president also viewed a water buffalo and some Indian handcrafts.

Shops in the city's predominately Muslim Charminar quarter were closed in protest of the president's visit, the Associated Press reported. Several hundred communist and Muslim demonstrators chanted "Bush go home" and carried posters of Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Bush returned to New Delhi later in the day to deliver an outdoor evening speech at the city's Purana Qila, a 16th century fort built by the Afghan conqueror Sher Sha Suri. In the speech, billed as the major address of Mr. Bush's trip to India, Mr. Bush spoke of the "natural partnership" between the United States and India, including the major nuclear pact that he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India announced in New Delhi on Thursday.

The pact, which fills in the broad outlines of a plan that was negotiated in July, would help India satisfy its huge civilian energy needs while allowing it to continue to develop nuclear weapons.

In the speech, Mr. Bush said the two countries were also united in the struggle against terrorism, noting that "both our nations know the pain of terrorism on our own soil."

The "two great purposes" of the partnership were "to expand the circle of prosperity and development across the world, and to defeat our common enemy by advancing the noble cause of human freedom," he said.

After the speech, Mr. Bush was scheduled to fly to Islamabad for an overnight stay and meetings with the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on Saturday. Mr. Bush said on Thursday that he was still making the trip despite a bombing near the U.S. consulate in Karachi on Thursday morning that left four dead, including an American diplomat.

Mr. Bush's overnight stay and day of events in Islamabad is in sharp contrast to Mr. Clinton's trip to the Pakistani capital in March 2000, when he arrived by an unmarked military plane and spent barely six hours there.

White House officials acknowledge the security problems in a country where Osama bin Laden is believed to be in hiding, but said they were manageable.

"Pakistan is both an ally in the war on terror and, in some sense, a site where the war is being carried about," Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, told reporters in New Delhi on Thursday.

Mr. Hadley added that "at this point, people are comfortable that the necessary precautions are in place, but this is not a risk-free undertaking."

John O'Neil contributed reporting for this article from New York.

    In India, Bush Urges Americans to Welcome Global Competition, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/international/asia/03cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1141448400&en=14258ae1db1ff295&ei=5094&partner=homepage

News Analysis

Dissenting on Atomic Deal

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, March 2 — In concluding its nuclear deal with India, the Bush administration faces significant opposition in Congress and tough questions from its allies on whether the arrangement could set a precedent encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons to Iran and other potential foes of the United States.

But Bush administration officials expressed confidence on Thursday that they could overcome the skepticism of the critics, in part because support is nearly universal in the West and among Republicans and Democrats in Washington for building India's strength as a bastion of democracy and a counterweight to China in Asia.

The Defense Department issued an unusually explicit statement hailing the deal for opening a path for more American-Indian military cooperation.

"Where only a few years ago, no one would have talked about the prospects for a major U.S.-India defense deal, today the prospects are promising, whether in the realm of combat aircraft, helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft or naval vessels," the Defense Department statement said.

Diplomats familiar with the negotiations with India said Britain, France, Germany and probably Russia would eventually line up to support the agreement, in part because it would clear the way for them to sell nuclear fuel, reactors and equipment to India. They would not agree to be identified, because several countries have yet to signal what stance they would take.

More skepticism is expected from China, several diplomats said, because India has made little secret of its desire for a nuclear weapons arsenal to counter Beijing and its longtime ally, Pakistan.

Critics of the deal in Congress and abroad are certain to focus on what they maintain is a double standard embraced by the Bush administration: in effect, allowing India to have nuclear weapons and still get international assistance but insisting that Iran, North Korea and other "rogue states" be given no such waiver.

But administration officials insisted there was no double standard.

"The comparison between India and Iran is just ludicrous," R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said Thursday in a telephone interview. "India is a highly democratic, peaceful, stable state that has not proliferated nuclear weapons. Iran is an autocratic state mistrusted by nearly all countries and that has violated its international commitments."

What has emerged on Capitol Hill is an alliance of conservative Republicans, who are concerned that the deal will encourage Iranian intransigence, and liberal Democrats, who charge that the Bush administration has effectively scrapped the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

This bipartisan skepticism is unusual, producing for example cooperation between a liberal Democrat, Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, and a conservative Republican, Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, chairman of the House International Relations Committee.

Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has raised more than 80 questions about the deal that he says need to be answered before it can be approved.

"People are worried about the precedent of establishing a full-fledged cooperation with India while we're wagging our finger at North Korea and Iran," said a Republican aide on Capitol Hill, who requested anonymity because he was describing matters still being weighed in private discussions. "But it's also true that India is facing an energy crisis, and we can't ignore that problem either."

The negotiated accord announced Thursday by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi is aimed at removing the ban effectively imposed by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on the sale of fuel and civilian nuclear technology to India, in return for India's agreement to put its civilian reactors under international inspections.

India, the negotiators agreed, will be able not only to retain its nuclear arms program but to keep a third of its reactors under military control, outside international inspection, including two so-called fast-breeder reactors that could produce fuel for weapons.

The accord would also allow India to build future breeder reactors and keep them outside international inspections. A fast-breeder reactor takes spent nuclear fuel and processes it for reuse as fuel or weapons. American officials negotiating with India over the last several months failed to get India to put its current and future breeder reactors under civilian control. But the accord would allow India to buy equipment and materials for only those new reactors that are to be used for civilian purposes.

India's refusal to put all its breeder reactors under civilian control was seen in New Delhi as a matter of pride and sovereignty. Mr. Singh, who reiterated the need for India's autonomy in nuclear matters, faces pressure from his governing coalition, which includes the Communist Party and other anti-American elements.

India's nuclear program has previously mixed civilian and military purposes. But the accord announced in New Delhi would place 14 of India's 22 nuclear reactors under civilian inspection regimes by 2014. The phase-in and the possibility that breeder reactors may never come under such a regime have drawn fire from critics.

"This deal not only lets India amass as many nuclear weapons as it wants, it looks like we made no effort to try to curtail them," said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "This is Santa Claus negotiating. The goal seems to have been to give away as much as possible."

    Dissenting on Atomic Deal, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/politics/03nuke.html?hp&ex=1141362000&en=3171609c02b6e215&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush and India Reach Pact That Allows Nuclear Sales

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and SOMINI SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI, March 2 — President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India announced here on Thursday what Mr. Bush called a "historic" nuclear pact that would help India satisfy its enormous civilian energy needs while allowing it to continue to develop nuclear weapons.

Under the agreement, the United States would end a decades-long moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components and India would separate its civilian and military nuclear programs, and open the civilian facilities to international inspections. The pact fills in the broad outlines of a plan that was negotiated in July.

In Washington, Democratic and Republican critics said that India's willingness to subject some of its nuclear program to inspections was meaningless so long as the country had a secret military nuclear program alongside it, and that the pact would only encourage rogue nations like North Korea and Iran to continue to pursue nuclear weapons. They predicted a bruising fight in Congress over the pact, which needs its approval. [Page A10.]

At the same time, Mr. Bush said he was going forward with a trip on Friday night to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to meet with the country's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, despite a bombing Thursday morning outside a Marriott Hotel and the United States Consulate in Karachi. The bombing, a suspected suicide attack, left four dead, including an American Embassy employee.

"Terrorists and killers are not going to prevent me from going to Pakistan," Mr. Bush said at a joint news conference with Mr. Singh. "My trip to Pakistan is an important trip. It's important to talk with President Musharraf about continuing our fight against terrorists. After all, he has had a direct stake in this fight; four times the terrorists have tried to kill him."

In New Delhi, American and Indian negotiators working all night reached agreement on the nuclear deal at 10:30 a.m. Thursday local time — only two hours before Mr. Bush and Mr. Singh announced it — after the United States accepted an Indian plan to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities.

In the plan, India agreed permanently to classify 14 of its 22 nuclear power reactors as civilian facilities, meaning those reactors will be subject for the first time to international inspections or safeguards.

The other reactors, as well as a prototype fast-breeder reactor in the early stages of development, will remain as military facilities, and not be subject to inspections. India also retained the right to develop future fast-breeder reactors for its military program, a provision that critics of the deal called astonishing. In addition, India said it was guaranteed a permanent supply of nuclear fuel.

The separation plan, according to a senior Indian official, also envisions India-specific rules from the International Atomic Energy Agency, effectively recognizing India as a nuclear weapons state in "a category of its own."

Both sides appeared eager to announce the agreement as the centerpiece of Mr. Bush's first visit to India, and did so with few details at a triumphal news conference on the lush grounds of Hyderabad House, a former princely residence in the heart of this capital. But Mr. Bush acknowledged that the deal now faced a difficult battle for approval in Congress that would entail a change in American law.

"We concluded an historic agreement today on nuclear power," Mr. Bush said, with Mr. Singh at his side. "It's not an easy job for the prime minister to achieve this agreement, I understand. It's not easy for the American president to achieve this agreement. But it's a necessary agreement. It's one that will help both our peoples."

Speaking of Congress, he added: "Some people just don't want to change and change with the times. But this agreement is in our interest."

Indians hailed the agreement as historic and highly advantageous for their country.

"It offers access to civilian nuclear energy, it protects your strategic program, and it mainstreams India," said Amitabh Mattoo, vice chancellor of Jammu University. "India couldn't have hoped for a better deal."

Critics also said keeping the fast-breeder reactors under military control, without inspections, would allow India to develop far more nuclear arms, and more quickly, than it has in the past. Fast-breeder reactors are highly efficient producers of the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons.

"It's not meaningful to talk about 14 of the 22 reactors being placed under safeguards," said Robert J. Einhorn, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who served as a top nonproliferation official in the Clinton administration and the early days of the Bush administration. "What's meaningful is what the Indians can do at the unsafeguarded reactors, which is vastly increase their production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. One has to assume that the administration was so interested in concluding a deal that it was prepared to cave in to the demands of the Indian nuclear establishment."

Critics of the deal also said it would now be more difficult for the United States to persuade Iran and other nations to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions.

"It will set a precedent that Iran will use to argue that the United States has a double standard," said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, a leading opponent of the deal. "You can't break the rules and expect Iran to play by them, and that's what President Bush is doing today."

Administration officials in New Delhi countered that India was a responsible nuclear power and had earned the right to the nuclear energy technology that it urgently needs for a booming economy and its population of one billion.

"India is unique," R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, told reporters at a briefing in New Delhi.

Mr. Burns, the administration's point man in the nuclear talks, added: "It has developed its entire nuclear program over 30 years alone because it had been isolated. So the question we faced was the following: Is it better to maintain India in isolation, or is it better to try to bring it into the international mainstream? And President Bush felt the latter."

The deal was praised by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "This agreement is an important step towards satisfying India's growing need for energy, including nuclear technology and fuel, as an engine for development.," he said in a statement. "It would also bring India closer as an important partner in the nonproliferation regime."

President Jacques Chirac of France also offered his blessings late Thursday, calling India "a responsible power" and saying access to civilian nuclear energy would help India "respond to its immense energy needs while limiting its emissions of greenhouse gases," Agence France-Presse reported.

At the news conference, Mr. Bush and Mr. Singh announced additional cooperative agreements on counterterrorism, fighting AIDS in India and trade, including the importing to the United States of Indian mangoes, considered by connoisseurs to be among the best in the world.

"And oh, by the way, Mr. Prime Minister, the United States is looking forward to eating Indian mangoes," Mr. Bush said at the news conference.

    Bush and India Reach Pact That Allows Nuclear Sales, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/international/asia/03prexy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Muslim-Led Protesters Rage Against Bush on His India Visit

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS and HARI KUMAR

MUMBAI, India, March 2 — For the second day in a row, raucous protests against President Bush's visit erupted across India on Thursday, with the most militant here in the nation's commercial capital.

As Mr. Bush had lunch with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the capital, New Delhi, tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out in Azad Maidan, a field here made famous by Gandhi's civil disobedience protests against British rule.

The current protest, called by Muslim organizations and leftist political parties, was largely peaceful, but bristling with an anti-American rage that is not often displayed in India.

The demonstrators shouted slogans against Mr. Bush. In one section of the field, a crowd gathered to burn an American flag. The crowd began beating the flaming flag. Then a young man lifted a boy named Shoaib over the fire and instructed him to urinate on it. He did, bemused by all the attention. He said he was in third grade.

Nearby, a few dozen men stood under a banner declaring, "We are ready to become suicide bomber." It is a sentiment rarely expressed openly in India, which has had domestic terrorism over the years but whose citizens have not seemed to be attracted to the current global terrorist networks.

"Suppose Bush is here," said Sajid Khan, 25, a student. "I will suicide bomb to Bush. If we could get a visa, we would go there and fight."

Crowd estimates varied from 250,000 to 700,000, according to the city police and a protest organizer — or from 10 percent to 25 percent of the Muslim population of Mumbai (also known as Bombay).

On the streets of New Delhi, protests on Thursday were much milder than a day earlier, when at least 50,000 people demonstrated. Fewer than 10,000 people showed up Thursday for a protest march and rally called by leftist political parties. "I am Bush. I ambush," read one placard. "Bush go back," the crowd chanted.

"We oppose Bush and our government," said Bijender Singh, 28, a farm worker. "Why did they invite Bush?"

Prakash Karat, secretary of the Communist Party of India, told the crowd at the rally, half a mile from the Parliament building, "George Bush is the guest of the government of India but not of the people of India."

Mr. Karat's party supports Manmohan Singh's Congress Party-led coalition government, but has been the loudest voice of opposition on the nuclear deal between the United States and India. The Communists also staged a protest on the steps of Parliament.

Jainarain Singh, a security guard active with the Communist Party, said he considered the alliance with the Bush White House to be detrimental to India's growth — the opposite of the message the prime minister tried to convey. "We should be independent," Jainarain Singh said. "We should not decide our policies under U.S. pressure."

All roads and lanes leading from the march route to Hyderabad House, where Mr. Bush and the prime minister held a news conference, were heavily fortified by the police.

From the eastern city of Calcutta, television news stations reported protests that featured burning effigies of Mr. Bush and drew an estimated 50,000 demonstrators.

Elsewhere in the capital, Mr. Bush's appearance on Thursday seemed to draw far less interest than the test cricket match between India and England. At a Subway fast-food restaurant on Connaught Place, New Delhi's commercial center, the television was tuned in to the cricket match.

Rajesh Kumar, 42, a marketing and sales executive for an Indian airline, said he was cynical about how India would benefit from the nuclear agreement.

"It's just a balloon of air, designed to pump up India's ego," he said. "People are still fighting for their bread and butter here. This won't solve anything." He added, "America wants to dominate the world."

The nuclear deal did not impress Sidharth Jain, 19, a computer engineering student, either. "The deal doesn't matter to us much," he said. "I don't think anyone really understands what it means." But he was hopeful that improved ties with the United States might make it easier for him to go to a university there.

Anand Giridharadas reported from Mumbai for this article, and Hari Kumar from New Delhi. Amelia Gentleman contributed reporting from New Delhi.

    Muslim-Led Protesters Rage Against Bush on His India Visit, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/international/asia/03protests.html

Bush says bin Laden will be found, 'brought to justice'

Posted 3/1/2006 4:01 AM Updated 3/1/2006 9:29 PM
USA TODAY
David Jackson

NEW DELHI — Osama bin Laden may have been just over the snow-capped peaks to the east when President Bush made a surprise stop in Afghanistan on Wednesday to see President Hamid Karzai and U.S. troops. (Related photos: President journeys through region)

"I am confident he will be brought to justice," Bush said of al-Qaeda's founder, who escaped during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. (Related video: U.S., Afghan leaders speak)

Bush's visit was his first to Afghanistan. He soaked in praise from Karzai, cut a ribbon for the new U.S. Embassy and gave troops a pep talk.

The security situation in Afghanistan was underscored by extreme caution surrounding Bush. The visit was kept secret until the last minute, and helicopter gunships guarded his every move.

U.S. troops working with Afghan opposition forces in late 2001 drove out the Taliban regime that hosted bin Laden.

About 18,000 U.S. troops remain in the country and regularly battle Taliban loyalists near the Pakistan border. That is where CIA Director Porter Goss says bin Laden hides.

Nearly 100 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan last year. Hours before Bush's visit, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency warned in congressional testimony that the resistance is expected to be strong again this year.

Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said attacks by the Taliban and other groups were up 20% last year. "Insurgents now represent a greater threat ... than at any point since late 2001," Maples said.

Bush said support for the Taliban from across the border in Pakistan would be a major topic when he meets that country's president, Pervez Musharraf, on Saturday.

Bin Laden released a taped message last month proclaiming he would rather die than be caught and humiliated by U.S. forces.

Contributing: Steven Komarow in Washington

    Bush says bin Laden will be found, 'brought to justice', UT, 1.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-03-01-bush-southasia_x.htm

Bush denies Iraq heading toward civil war

Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:26 PM ET
Reuters
By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, hit by polls showing America's support for the Iraq war at an all-time low, denied on Tuesday Iraq was sliding into civil war, despite the worst sectarian strife since a U.S. invasion.

The decline in Bush's public approval ratings came as he told Iraqis they faced a choice between "chaos or unity" amid violence that has dented U.S. hopes for the stability needed to pave the way for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

At least 60 people were killed in Baghdad on Tuesday in the latest in a series of deadly attacks following the bombing of a major Shi'ite mosque last week.

Asked what Washington would do if civil war broke out in Iraq, Bush told ABC News: "I don't buy your premise that there's going to be a civil war."

He said he had spoken to leaders of all Iraqi sects and "I heard loud and clear that they understand that they're going to choose unification, and we're going to help them do so."

Despite that, sectarian bloodshed has complicated efforts to forge a new unity government.

At home, pessimism over Iraq, and Bush's support -- despite bipartisan objections -- for letting a state-owned Arab company take over operations at six U.S. ports, appeared to be major factors driving his job performance rating down to 34 percent.

They were the lowest CBS News poll numbers of his presidency, creating a grim picture in a midterm election year.

Bush brushed aside the findings, saying ups and downs in the polls were not worth worrying about.

"I've got ample capital and I'm using it to spread freedom and to protect the American people," he told ABC before leaving on an trip to South Asia that offered a breather from problems and miscues that have recently plagued him in his second term.

U.S. TROOPS WANT OUT

The same CBS poll showed public approval for Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, once among his strongest suits, falling to 30 percent from 37 percent in January.

Sixty-two percent of Americans said they thought U.S. efforts to bring order to Iraq were going badly, up from 54 percent in January, compared with 36 percent who said things were going well, a drop from 45 percent.

Raising questions about Bush's vow to keep troops in Iraq as long as they are needed, a Le Moyne College/Zogby poll showed 72 percent of U.S troops serving there think the United States should exit within the next year. Nearly one in four said the troops should leave immediately.

A strategy often used by the Bush administration against opponents of the war in Iraq has been to accuse them of being unfair to troops who want to stay until they get the job done.

But Americans' opposition to the war has grown as U.S. casualties have mounted and violence has persisted despite a costly program to train Iraqi police and soldiers. There have been 2,295 U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003.

Before leaving for India and Pakistan, Bush skirted a reporter's question of whether the latest Iraqi violence would affect prospects for beginning a drawdown of the 136,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq.

"The people of Iraq and their leaders must make a choice," Bush said after a White House meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. "The choice is a free society, or a society dictated ... by evil people who will kill innocents."

Administration officials have accused Sunni-led insurgents, including al Qaeda operatives, of trying to foment civil war in Iraq. In Washington, a U.S. military intelligence chief called the situation "very tenuous" but not yet civil war.

Seated with Bush, Berlusconi stood by his plan to withdraw all of Italy's 3,000 troops from Iraq by the end of the year.

"This plan has been agreed upon also together with our allies, and with the Iraqi government," Berlusconi, one of Bush's staunchest allies on Iraq, told reporters.

    Bush denies Iraq heading toward civil war, R, 28.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-01T002612Z_01_N28194066_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-BUSH.xml

Bush Administration Pushes to Quell Port Deal Furor

February 24, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 — The Bush administration signaled on Thursday that it was seeking a way to delay, at least briefly, a Dubai company from taking over operations of terminals at six major American ports, in hopes that the additional time might allow the White House to assuage angry Republicans and Democrats in Congress who are threatening to block the deal.

The bid for a compromise came as administration officials and Senate Democrats clashed in a public hearing on Capitol Hill about whether allowing Dubai Ports World, a state-owned firm in the United Arab Emirates, to assume management of American ports would represent a national security risk.

In an effort to calm Congress, the administration released a confidential letter sent on Jan. 6 in which the Dubai firm committed to continuing its participation in a range of American-led initiatives to close gaping security holes in ports around the world, including an agreement with the Department of Energy a year ago to use new equipment in Dubai's own seaports intended to sniff out radioactive shipments.

Among the ports in the United States where the company hopes to take over terminals, only one, in Newark, is similarly equipped with nuclear detectors. On Thursday afternoon the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Newark container port, said it would terminate the lease of P&O Ports, the current, British-based manager of the terminal, in an effort to stop what it termed an illegal transfer to the Dubai company.

Critics of the deal were skeptical Thursday about the proposed delay. White House officials say that because the deal was formally approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in mid-January, the administration has no legal channel to reopen its review of the acquisition, a step being pressed by Congress, unless it determines that the company misled the federal government.

But with members of Congress threatening to enact legislation to block the deal, the White House signaled that it would welcome an agreement by Dubai Ports to delay final closing of the deal, which is scheduled to take place next week. Congressional aides said representatives of the company were testing that idea on Capitol Hill on Thursday afternoon, and late Thursday night the company offered to delay part of the deal, The Associated Press reported.

Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff and President Bush's chief political adviser, said in an interview with Fox News that while the acquisition by Dubai Ports World would pass its final regulatory hurdles next week, "there's no requirement that it close, you know, immediately after that."

Mr. Rove added: "Our interest is in making certain the members of Congress have full information about it, and that, we're convinced, will give them a level of comfort with this."

A senior White House official said, however, that Mr. Bush was still adamant that he would veto any effort by Congress to overturn the deal.

"He's completely adamant about this," another aide to Mr. Bush said. If a Dubai company is treated as less trustworthy than a British one, the aide said, "he thinks that the signal in the Mideast would be disastrous."

Mr. Bush's strategy appears to hinge on buying time and deflecting Congressional efforts to have a final say on whether the deal should go through. Critics of the deal said the White House proposal was insufficient.

"A simple 30-day cooling off period without the full 45-day review that should have been done from the beginning is not adequate," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. "If the president were to voluntarily institute the review and delay the contract, that would obviate the need for our legislation, but a simple cooling off period will not allay our concerns."

Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at the public hearing that the White House needed to "recognize the very strong sentiment in Congress" for requiring further review of the acquisition. Mr. Warner said he hoped the political uproar would "work itself out" without Congress intervening.

His statement appeared to be aimed at persuading the White House and Dubai Ports World to accept political reality and submit the deal to further examination.

Mr. Warner convened the hearing at which a group of administration officials conceded little ground in a nearly three-hour briefing on the details of the deal. The group, led by the deputy Treasury secretary, Robert M. Kimmitt, said that the administration's interagency review of the transaction had taken three months, and that the Dubai company had been willing to address concerns raised by the Department of Homeland Security.

In the Jan. 6 letter to the department, the company agreed to operate the terminals "to the extent possible with the current U.S. management structure" and to maintain existing security policies. But most of its assurances centered on compliance with existing United States law.

Democratic lawmakers asserted that acquisition fell under a provision of the law requiring a far more extensive, 45-day government review of transactions that have potential national security implications or involve, as this transaction does, a state-owned company.

"Is there not one agency in this government that believes this takeover could affect the national security of the United States?" asked Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

But Mr. Kimmitt said "all of those concerns were addressed" in the administration's initial, three-month examination of the deal. When the interagency panel charged with reviewing foreign acquisitions met in mid-January — its only formal meeting on the Dubai Ports World acquisition — no agency raised further national concerns, Mr. Kimmitt said. That made an additional 45-day review unnecessary, he said.

Democrats disagreed, and even Mr. Warner conceded that the language of the statute could be read to require the additional investigation. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, said that the administration's review "appears to be cursory at best" and that "port security is too important to be treated this cavalierly."

When Congress returns from recess next week, House and Senate lawmakers from both parties are expected to introduce legislation to require further examination of the acquisition's national's security implications, an idea that the Republicans leadership in both chambers have supported.

Mr. Schumer and Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, have said they will propose companion bills to block the Dubai Ports World acquisition until after the 45-day review is completed. The bill would give Congress the option of voting to block the deal after the review is completed. Other lawmakers from both parties said they planned to introduce similar measures.

At a stop in Abu Dhabi Thursday during a Middle East trip, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the United Arab Emirates as a strong and reliable ally and "a stalwart partner" as she urged Congress to approve the deal.

The administration's vetting procedure for the ports deal, Ms. Rice said, "is supposed to be a process that raises concerns if they are there but does not presume that a country in the Middle East should not be capable of doing a deal like this."

The fact that the United States reached an agreement with Dubai Ports last year to participate in scanning cargo for radioactive shipments is significant because it could explain why the government, and particularly American intelligence agencies, felt comfortable with the company. But it also spoke to one of the worries behind the deal: Dubai was the critical transshipment point for illicit nuclear technology shipped to Libya and elsewhere by the network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer.

Senator Levin pressed Robert Joseph, the assistant secretary of state for international security, about the incident, and Mr. Joseph acknowledged that "large numbers of centrifuge parts that were manufactured in Malaysia' were "shipped from Dubai." But Mr. Joseph also insisted that "actions that were taken in Dubai' had helped in the interception of a ship before it arrived in Libya.

    Bush Administration Pushes to Quell Port Deal Furor, NYT, 24.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/politics/24ports.html?hp&ex=1140757200&en=644d77977a0da637&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Katrina report urges clearer Pentagon role

Thu Feb 23, 2006 11:35 AM ET
Reuters
By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon should have a clearer role in dealing with disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the White House said on Thursday in recommending emergency-management changes after a problem-plagued federal response.

President George W. Bush, who has been widely criticized for an administration response deemed too slow, had ordered the review on September 6 as New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf Coast struggled to recover from the disaster which killed about 1,300 people and left thousands homeless.

The review led by Frances Townsend, homeland security adviser to Bush, follows a congressional report that sharply criticized the U.S. government's disaster response.

"I wasn't satisfied with the federal response," Bush said during a Cabinet meeting. "The report helps us anticipate how to better respond to future disasters."

The 217-page report acknowledged inadequate preparedness for the storm and said the current homeland security system "has structural flaws for addressing catastrophic events." But it did not single out anyone for blame.

It said better planning and coordination and clearer designation of responsibilities were needed, and identified 11 changes needed before June 1, the start of the next hurricane season. These include establishing joint field offices to manage federal efforts when disasters are predicted.

The report said the departments of Homeland Security and Defense should jointly plan for the military's disaster support, and in "extraordinary circumstances" the Defense Department should lead the federal effort.

The federal government should not be the first responder to a disaster, but should help state and local authorities when they become overwhelmed, it said.

"Federal officials struggled to perform responsibilities generally conducted by state and local authorities, such as the rescue of citizens stranded by the rising floodwaters, provision of law enforcement, and evacuation of the remaining population of New Orleans," the report said.

It cited a lack of planning and of a functioning state and local command structure.

On the military's role, it said, "The federal response to Hurricane Katrina demonstrates that the Department of Defense (DOD) has the capability to play a critical role in the nation's response to catastrophic events."

"Since DOD, first and foremost, has its critical overseas mission, the solution to improving the federal response to future catastrophes cannot simply be 'let the Department of Defense do it'," it said. But the department's abilities to help must be better identified and built into response plans.

The military response to Katrina was slowed by federal law and Defense Department policy that any military assistance must first be requested by local officials, the report said.

It recommends linking the National Guard more closely with active-duty forces for homeland security.

A Defense Department representative should also be present at the disaster field offices and Federal Emergency Management Agency regional offices to improve military coordination, it said.

A report by congressional Republicans last week said federal emergency agencies were unprepared for Katrina and quicker White House involvement might have helped.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has acknowledged that his department was overwhelmed by the August 29 storm but has denied that he and Bush were unresponsive.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan)

    Katrina report urges clearer Pentagon role, NYT, 23.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-02-23T163532Z_01_N23521815_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-KATRINA.xml

Bush Would Veto Any Bill to Halt Dubai Port Deal

February 22, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 — President Bush, trying to put down a rapidly escalating rebellion among leaders of his own party, said Tuesday that he would veto any legislation blocking a deal for a state-owned company in Dubai to take over the management of port terminals in New York, Miami, Baltimore and other major American cities.

Mr. Bush issued the threat after the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, publicly criticized the deal and said a thorough review was necessary to ensure that terrorists could not exploit the arrangement to slip weapons into American ports. Mr. Bush suggested that the objections to the deal might be based on bias against a company from the Middle East, one he said was an ally in fighting terrorism.

"If there was any chance that this transaction would jeopardize the security of the United States, it would not go forward," Mr. Bush said, discussing a government review of the deal that began in October and ended on Jan. 16 without producing any objections from officials in his administration.

The president added, "This is a company that has played by the rules, that has been cooperative with the United States, a country that's an ally in the war on terror, and it would send a terrible signal to friends and allies not to let this transaction go through."

The White House was taken by surprise when Mr. Frist and Mr. Hastert joined Democratic leaders in Congress and other prominent Republicans, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, in calling for the government to stop the deal from closing next week as scheduled.

"We have not received the necessary assurances regarding security concerns," Mr. Bloomberg wrote in a letter to the president on Tuesday evening. He said he was joining New York's two Democratic senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, in calling for a 45-day investigation of the deal under a federal law that governs the review of foreign investments.

Mr. Frist gave the White House only an hour's notice before breaking ranks and saying that "the decision to finalize this deal should be put on hold." He said that if a delay did not occur, he would "plan on introducing legislation to ensure that the deal is placed on hold until this decision gets a more thorough review."

The response from the White House set up a confrontation between Mr. Bush, who has said his primary goal is protecting the American people, and the leadership of his party in Congress, which is approaching midterm elections.

Mr. Bush rarely makes veto threats, and he has not vetoed a single bill in his more than five years in office. He issued his remarks after calling reporters into his conference room aboard Air Force One while flying back to Washington from Colorado, and then repeated them for television cameras after stepping out of his helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House.

The White House appeared to have considered the deal routine, especially because so many foreign firms — from Singapore, Denmark and Japan — run major port terminals in the United States and have for years. But Senator Schumer, in an interview, said: "I don't think China or Britain or many of the others have the nexus with terrorism that Dubai has. What kind of controls do they have to prevent infiltration?"

Mr. Bush's aides rejected that line of thought, saying the company in question, Dubai Ports World, which is owned by the government of Dubai, would have no control over security issues at the six terminal operations it is seeking to buy, at New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans. The company would not own the ports but would operate some of the terminals in these cities.

They pointed out that a similar purchase involving the container-handling division of the CSX Corporation, which was bought by Dubai Ports in December 2004, went through with no objections. In that case, none of the terminals Dubai Ports assumed control of were in the United States.

But the central argument of the deal's proponents is that the United Arab Emirates have aided the United States in pursuing terror groups.

"We have naval visits there and landing rights," said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, which has scheduled a briefing on the subject for Thursday. "We have to move carefully in considering the implications of what we do."

But Dubai's record is hardly unblemished. Two of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks came from the United Arab Emirates and laundered some of their money through the country's banking system. It was also the main transshipment point for Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear engineer who ran the world's largest nuclear proliferation ring from warehouses near the port, met Iranian officials there, and shipped centrifuge equipment, which can be used to enrich uranium, from there to Libya.

The opposition to the deal brought expressions of befuddlement from shipping industry and port experts. The shipping business, they said, went global more than a decade ago, and foreign-based firms already control more than 30 percent of the port terminals in the United States. They include APL Limited, which is controlled by the government of Singapore and operates terminals in Los Angeles; Oakland, Calif.; Dutch Harbor, Alaska; and Seattle.

Globally, 24 of the top 25 ship terminal operators are foreign-based, meaning most of the containers sent to the United States leave terminals around the world that are operated by foreign governments or foreign-based companies.

"This kind of reaction is totally illogical," said Philip Damas, research director at Drewry Shipping Consultants of London. "The location of the headquarters of a company in the age of globalism is irrelevant."

The administration's review of the deal was conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a body that was created in 1975 to review foreign investments in the country that could affect national security. Under that review, officials from the Defense, State, Commerce and Transportation Departments, along with the National Security Council and other agencies, were charged with raising questions and passing judgment. They found no problems to warrant the next stage of review, a 45-day investigation with results reported to the president for a final decision.

However, a 1993 amendment to the law stipulates that such an investigation is mandatory when the acquiring company is controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government. Administration officials said they conducted additional inquires because of the ties to the United Arab Emirates, but they could not say why a 45-day investigation did not occur.

Administration officials acknowledged on Tuesday that they had, at least in some ways, mishandled the matter by not briefing members of Congress early enough to avoid the outburst that resulted when the news of the deal was made public.

"We probably should have gotten up there further in advance than we did," said Clay Lowery, assistant secretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department.

But officials insisted that they made the right choice, conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the management structure at Dubai Ports World, its operations abroad, and its security plans.

"The review said there was no derogatory information against this company, and this company did not raise undue concerns about national security," Mr. Lowery said.

The company, the officials noted, volunteered early last year to allow goods headed to the United States to be screened before they left a port it operates at its home base in Dubai.

The company agreed to continue this effort at its terminals and take other security steps, including giving American officials access to information on its United States-based employees and certifying that it had conducted background checks on them, Department of Homeland Security officials said.

Thomas H. Gilmour, an assistant commandant at the United States Coast Guard, which is in charge of port security, said that to ensure the promises were honored, his agency was already conducting inspections at each of the terminals Dubai Ports World intends to take over.

Officials in Dubai and representatives for Dubai Ports World said the reaction to the deal was being driven by politics, not security concerns.

They pointed out that in 2002 security authorities in the United Arab Emirates captured a Qaeda leader, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, described at the time as Al Qaeda's chief of naval operations. He was convicted by a Yemeni court in 2004 of helping to organize the attack that killed 17 sailors on the Cole, a United States destroyer, in the port of Aden.

In 2004, the United Arab Emirates also arrested Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a leader of the radical Islamic group Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami, and turned him over to the Pakistani authorities.

"Our track record speaks for itself," said one United Arab Emirates official, who asked not to be named because of the confidential nature of the security matters. "We have handed over a number of high-value Al Qaeda suspects either to their home countries or to the U.S."

Dubai Ports World has been inching toward the United States market, most notably in 2004 when it bought the international port terminal businesses from CSX, the American-based railroad and transportation company, which included sites in the Dominican Republic and Europe. In this latest deal, worth $6.8 billion, it would buy the 29 global port terminals operated by Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation of Britain.

George Dalton, general counsel for Dubai Ports World, said the company was committed to maintaining or improving security operations at all of its terminals. The uproar over the deal, he said, is entirely political.

"I think it borders on the absurd," he said. "They are sending exactly the wrong message to the Arab world."

Hassan M. Fattah contributed reporting from Yemen for this article, and Heather Timmons from London.

    Bush Would Veto Any Bill to Halt Dubai Port Deal, NYT, 22.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/politics/22port.html?hp&ex=1140584400&en=f4f4865cd9e80578&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In Visits to 3 States, Bush Pushes Alternative Energy

February 21, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Feb. 20 — President Bush on Monday promoted his plan to reduce American dependence on foreign oil by using alternative energy sources, but he did not repeat a promise to cut back on Middle East oil imports that drew complaints from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and was disavowed by his energy secretary.

Instead, on a day when oil prices rose to more than $60 a barrel because of militant attacks on oil suppliers in the Niger Delta, Mr. Bush toned down his implicit criticism of countries in the Persian Gulf and spoke of American reliance on foreign oil in more general terms.

"Some of the nations we rely on for oil have unstable governments, or fundamental differences with the United States," Mr. Bush said in a speech in Milwaukee, his first stop of the day. "These countries know we need their oil, and that reduces influence. It creates a national security issue when we're held hostage for energy by foreign nations that may not like us."

As alternatives to oil, Mr. Bush promoted battery-powered cars at the stop in Wisconsin and solar power at a later stop in Michigan. He ended the day in Colorado, where some three dozen workers at the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory were rehired after being laid off soon after Mr. Bush's State of the Union address promoting renewable energy.

A statement released Monday by the Energy Department said that Samuel W. Bodman, the energy secretary, ordered the transfer of $5 million over the weekend to immediately restore the jobs, which had been eliminated because of past budget cuts, thereby avoiding a political embarrassment for the president. Mr. Bush is to visit the laboratory, in Golden, Colo., on Tuesday morning.

The programs at the energy laboratory, Mr. Bodman said in a statement, "are critically important to realizing the president's vision to diversify and strengthen our nation's energy mix."

Both Republicans and Democrats commend Mr. Bush for endorsing alternative sources of energy, but Republicans question the practicality of relying on them and Democrats say that a more significant way of reducing reliance on foreign oil is imposing higher fuel-efficiency standards on cars, which Mr. Bush opposes.

Mr. Bush's trip to promote his energy proposals, first put forth in his State of the Union address on Jan. 31, dovetailed with his campaign travels. Wisconsin, Michigan and Colorado have races important to the White House this year, but of particular concern is Colorado, where a recent poll shows a Republican candidate for governor, Representative Bob Beauprez, trailing Bill Ritter, a Democrat and former Denver district attorney.

Although Mr. Bush did no overt politicking in the three states, the view of the White House is that his appearances are helpful to Republican candidates because they motivate the party's most faithful supporters.

In Milwaukee, Mr. Bush toured a technology center of Johnson Controls, the world's largest supplier of standard car batteries and a leader in research into new lithium ion batteries for hybrid cars. Afterward, in a speech to Johnson Controls employees, Mr. Bush urged Congress to support an additional $31 million for research into the new batteries, as called for in his 2007 budget.

Lithium ion batteries are smaller and more efficient than the current nickel metal hydride batteries used in hybrid cars, although they are still years away from widespread use.

"You've got your car, you pull in, you plug it right into the wall," Mr. Bush said, adding that he anticipated a day when cars with lithium ion batteries could go 40 miles on electricity alone. Current hybrid cars use the gasoline engine to charge the onboard battery.

In Auburn Hills, Mich., Mr. Bush toured United Solar Ovonic, a maker of solar panels. "The ultimate goal is to have solar technology on your home, and that home will become a little power-generating unit unto itself," Mr. Bush told reporters afterward.

Mr. Bush proposed in his State of the Union address that the United States replace 75 percent of oil imports from the Middle East with alternative sources of energy by 2025. The next day, Mr. Bodman said that the president should not be taken literally and that the Middle East goal was "merely an example" of what might be done.

    In Visits to 3 States, Bush Pushes Alternative Energy, NYT, 21.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/national/21bush.html

Bush: US must not be "hostage" to foreign oil

Mon Feb 20, 2006 6:41 PM ET
Reuters
By Tabassum Zakaria

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - The United States must reduce its dependence on oil from foreign countries that can hold it hostage, President George W. Bush said on Monday as he tried to revive an agenda obscured by controversy over Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

"Some of the nations we rely on for oil have unstable governments or fundamental differences with the United States," Bush said in a speech at the start a two-day swing through Wisconsin, Michigan and Colorado.

"These countries know we need their oil and that reduces influence. It creates a national security issue when we're held hostage for energy by foreign nations that may not like us," he added, without naming the countries.

Drawn-out publicity over Cheney's accidental shooting of a quail-hunting partner during a trip to Texas cost Bush valuable time last week in trying to push his agenda. His efforts to promote health care proposals were drowned out by the focus on Cheney, who delayed commenting publicly for four days.

Disputes over a domestic eavesdropping program and the response to Hurricane Katrina have also thrown Bush's administration off stride.

Bush toured a Johnson Controls Inc. battery development center and looked at two hybrid SUVs before speaking at a company headquarters in Milwaukee.

Bush said he envisioned a future in which a plug-in hybrid car could drive 40 miles on a lithium-ion battery, then stop at a filling station for ethanol, a fuel usually made from corn. The trip wouldn't require a drop of oil, he said.

In his State of the Union address last month, Bush said the United States must break an addiction to Middle East oil. He has called for improving alternative-fuel technology to reduce U.S. oil imports from the region by 75 percent by 2025.

'WE'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING ... NOW'

He has promoted alternative fuels such as ethanol, and research into producing fuel from wood chips or grasses.

Frank Verrastro, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said last week he did not understand why Bush was singling out the Middle East when Saudi Arabia was a reliable oil supplier, compared with Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria.

Bush, a former oilman, said, "I know it came as a shock to some to hear a Texan stand up there in front of the country and say, 'We got a real problem. America is addicted to oil.' But I meant it because it's a true fact and we've got to do something about it now."

High gasoline prices have weighed on Bush's popularity as the midterm election year gets under way with control of Congress up for grabs.

Government figures show the national average price for regular unleaded gasoline last week was $2.28 per gallon, up about 39 cents from a year ago. That was down from the record $3.07 a gallon set in September after Hurricane Katrina disrupted Gulf Coast refineries.

Bush, advocating nuclear power, pointed to France having built 58 nuclear plants since the 1970s, and China having 8 nuclear plants in the works, with plans to build at least 40 more over the next two decades.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Democrats were willing to work with Bush on alternative energy, but last year's energy legislation suggested Bush had different priorities.

"We need more than just rhetoric from a president who let Big Oil write our energy policies," he said.

Democratic lawmakers are upset that Bush's proposed 2007 budget makes a 32 percent cut in an Energy Department program that helps low-income families pay for energy-saving insulation, storm windows and updated water heaters.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan)

    Bush: US must not be "hostage" to foreign oil, R, 20.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-02-20T234106Z_01_N19196975_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH.xml

Facing Pressure, White House Seeks Approval for Spying

February 20, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAVID E. SANGER

After two months of insisting that President Bush did not need court approval to authorize the wiretapping of calls between the United States and suspected terrorists abroad, the administration is trying to resist pressure for judicial review while pushing for retroactive Congressional approval of the program.

The administration opened negotiations with Congress last week, but it is far from clear whether Mr. Bush will be able to fend off calls from Democrats and some Republicans for increased oversight of the eavesdropping program, which is run by the National Security Agency.

The latest Republican to join the growing chorus of those seeking oversight is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Mr. Graham, a former military prosecutor whose opinion on national security commands respect in the Senate, said he believed there was now a "bipartisan consensus" to have broader Congressional and judicial review of the program.

"I do believe we can provide oversight in a meaningful way without compromising the program," he said, "and I am adamant that the courts have some role when it comes to warrants. If you're going to follow an American citizen around for an extended period of time believing they're collaborating with the enemy, at some point in time, you need to get some judicial review, because mistakes can be made."

Four other leading Senate Republicans, including the heads of three committees — Judiciary, Homeland Security and Intelligence — have said they would prefer some degree of judicial oversight. Their positions, if they hold, could make the negotiations more difficult.

The White House is hoping that talks will lead to legislation to approve the program, much as Congress eventually approved Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Mr. Bush expanded on his defense of the program in Tampa, Fla., on Friday, saying he believed that he had to take extraordinary steps in a time of war.

"Unfortunately, we're having this discussion," he said of the debate over wiretapping. "It's too bad, because guess who listens to the discussion: the enemy."

He added: "The enemy is adjusting. But I'm going to tell you something. I'm doing the right thing. Washington is a town that says, you didn't connect the dots, and then when you do connect the dots, they say you're wrong."

But two days before Mr. Bush spoke, the White House opened the door to talks in the hope of avoiding a full-scale Congressional investigation. According to lawmakers involved in the discussions, a number of senior officials, including Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., the chief of staff, began contacting members of the Senate to determine what it would take to derail the investigation.

The White House has refused to discuss those talks. Trent Duffy, a deputy press secretary, said the administration "does not want to negotiate in the media."

But some lawmakers have given glimpses of the conversations, including Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, a member of the intelligence panel who was prepared to vote with Democrats on Thursday to open an inquiry until the White House agreed to negotiate.

Ms. Snowe, who favors some kind of judicial review, characterized the talks as a "fundamental shift" in the debate. "I think there has been a quantum leap," she said in an interview, adding that senators were "really trying to wrestle the best way to craft a measured bill."

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, has said he would prefer to see the program brought under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Mr. Roberts also says he is concerned that in an era of fast-paced electronic surveillance, the court may not be able to issue warrants quickly enough to meet the needs of the program.

Without offering specifics, Mr. Roberts spoke in an interview last week of "streamlining FISA" and said the N.S.A. would have to be involved in those negotiations.

Complicating the effort to reach a deal is the difficulty of surmounting the president's No. 1 objective: that no discussion make public the technology underlying the spying effort.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has given the administration two weeks to negotiate. If the White House does not demonstrate a good-faith effort, members say, the Democratic proposal for a full-scale inquiry will be back on the table at the panel's next meeting on March 7.

Republican leaders of the House Intelligence Committee have also agreed to some kind of inquiry, but there is a dispute about how broad it should be. Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan and the committee chairman, was traveling in Asia on Sunday and could not be reached for comment.

With Congress in recess for the next week, reaching an agreement on any legislation that contains concrete details seems unlikely. As Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, said: "People are all over the place. We don't have a consensus."

Mr. DeWine is calling for legislation that would explicitly authorize the wiretapping and exempt it from the 1978 law that created the intelligence court to review classified applications for wiretapping inside the United States. The White House has embraced that concept, because it would take away the uncertainties of judicial review.

Mr. DeWine said he would also create small subcommittees of the Senate and House intelligence committees, with "professional staff," to oversee the program. "The key is oversight," he said.

It is unclear how Mr. DeWine's idea could turn into legislation without describing the surveillance program in some detail, which Mr. Bush has opposed.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are still demanding an inquiry. They also say that writing legislation will be impossible without knowing all the facts.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and his party's senior member on the intelligence panel, said, "No member of the Senate can cast an informed vote on legislation authorizing, or, conversely, restricting, the N.S.A.'s warrantless surveillance program when they fundamentally do not know what they are authorizing or restricting."

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, has drafted legislation that would require the FISA court to review the constitutionality of the eavesdropping program. Mr. Specter says he is sympathetic to the administration's concern that briefing lawmakers could lead to leaks, which is why he wants to turn the matter over to the courts.

But he insists that the eavesdropping must be subjected to a rigorous constitutional review and has said that anything short of that would be "window dressing."

    Facing Pressure, White House Seeks Approval for Spying, NYT, 20.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/politics/20nsa.html

Bush requests more war, hurricane emergency money

Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:23 AM ET
Reuters
By Vicki Allen and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush asked Congress on Thursday for $72.4 billion in emergency funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the pace of spending on the conflicts increased.

Bush also sought $19.8 billion for the hurricane-battered U.S. Gulf Coast, which would push relief after Hurricane Katrina to some $90 billion.

"This request provides the resources necessary ... so the Coalition can continue to hand over control of more territory to Iraqi forces," Bush said of the war funding request.

The Pentagon would get $65.3 billion to finance the wars, while additional funds for Iraq and Afghanistan aid and operations would go through the State Department and $2.9 billion would go to intelligence operations.

Bush also sought money for aid for the humanitarian crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, earthquake relief in Pakistan, promoting democracy in Iran and other uses overseas.

With this package and the $50 billion the White House said it will seek for early next fiscal year starting on October 1, the wars' costs will pass $440 billion, and likely will approach $500 billion by the end of next year, mostly for Iraq.

The cost for the wars this year will be about $111 billion, up from about $100 billion last year, White House and Pentagon officials said in a conference call with reporters.

Iraq operations are costing an average of $5.9 billion per month, and Afghanistan an average of $900 million, they said, attributing the higher costs partly to higher fuel prices.

Republicans said they would move quickly on the request, while Democrats said the mounting price tag reflected the administration's bungling of the Iraq conflict.

"The fog of war should refer to the chaos of the battlefield, not the administration's strategy," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee.

PREPARING IRAQI, AFGHAN FORCES

White House deputy budget director Joel Kaplan said the money will help "prepare our Iraqi and Afghan allies' security forces and their government to stand on their own and successfully combat the insurgents as well as providing urgent humanitarian relief."

Out of the Pentagon's share of the money, $34.7 billion would go to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; $10.4 billion to overhaul and replace tanks, Humvees and other equipment being worn down in the conflicts; $5.9 billion to train Iraqi and Afghan security forces; and $1.9 billion for technologies to combat improvised explosive devices that have accounted for many of the casualties in Iraq.

A sum of $3.4 billion would go to the Pentagon's efforts to make Army brigades more quickly deployable and interchangeable.

The White House wants an additional $3.25 billion for Iraq, split between the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and other government operations and security there, and money to help rebuild and secure the infrastructure and improve the economy.

It also is seeking more than $500 million for emergency humanitarian and peacekeeping needs in Sudan and the Darfur crisis, $125 million in food aid to Africa, and $126 million for earthquake relief for Pakistan.

The additional money for hurricane rebuilding would be used for efforts to provide shelter and medical care to victims, as well as cleanup activities from the disaster that killed about 1,300 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Louisiana would get $4.2 billion in block grants to improve housing and infrastructure. The state suffered the worst losses from Hurricane Katrina, which also destroyed portions of Alabama and Mississippi.

The White House said nearly $1.4 billion would be spent to protect New Orleans from future storms. About $70 million would be spent on early-warning systems and other crisis communications equipment.

Federal facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, including a New Orleans veterans hospital, Coast Guard facilities and border protection, would be rebuilt with the emergency money.

    Bush requests more war, hurricane emergency money, R, 17.2.2006,http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-02-17T052306Z_01_N16320151_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-SPENDING.xml

Budget Reflects Competition for Money

February 5, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 — President Bush wants to spend more on bird flu and the physical sciences next year, but would freeze the budget of the National Institutes of Health and would slightly cut federal support for research on cancer and heart disease, two of the leading killers of Americans, budget documents show.

The president's budget, to be unveiled on Monday, shows the hard choices facing Congress and the nation as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue and Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security take up a growing share of the federal dollar.

Mr. Bush is requesting a second installment of money to protect the nation against the threat of pandemic influenza: $2.65 billion in 2007, on top of the $3.3 billion that Congress provided for this year.

Budget documents from the Department of Health and Human Services say Mr. Bush would use the new money to buy flu vaccine for every person in the United States and to provide antiviral drugs to one-fourth of the population in an emergency. Health officials see the disease, first reported in Asia, as a serious threat. The World Health Organization says that 161 people have been infected and that 86 of them have died.

Mr. Bush's budget follows up a commitment in his State of the Union address to double spending on basic research in the physical sciences over 10 years as a way to "keep America competitive."

The president will request $6 billion for the National Science Foundation in 2007, an increase of 7.8 percent over this year's level, and is seeking $4.1 billion for the science office at the Energy Department, an increase of 14 percent, according to budget documents.

The science foundation, an engine of high-tech innovation, supports the work of many mathematicians, physicists, chemists, engineers, computer scientists and biologists.

Patrick White, director of federal relations for the Association of American Universities, which represents 60 large research universities, said, "We are very pleased to see what the Bush administration is doing for the physical sciences."

Congress doubled the budget of the National Institutes of Health over five years, from 1998 to 2003, and Mr. Bush often takes credit for completing that increase. But Mr. White said the administration "now seems to be neglecting the N.I.H."

Under the president's budget for 2007, the institutes would get $28.6 billion, the same as this year. Mr. Bush proposes small cuts for 18 of the 19 institutes — all but the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is leading research on bird flu and biological terrorism.

In his 2007 budget, Mr. Bush is seeking $4.75 billion for the National Cancer Institute, which is $40 million less than its current budget and $71 million less than it got in 2005. He is requesting $2.9 billion for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is $21 million less than the current budget and $40 million less than in 2005.

The budget says, "Chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States, accounting for 70 percent of all deaths."

But the president's budget would cut spending for programs that seek to prevent chronic disease and promote healthy behaviors. Congress provided $900 million for those programs in 2005. Mr. Bush requested $840 million for 2006; Congress provided $839 million. Mr. Bush is now requesting $819 million for 2007.

Kim A. Elliott, deputy director of the Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit advocacy group, praised the president's commitment to bird flu preparations. "The president and his political appointees listened to the professional judgment of scientists and medical and public health experts," Ms. Elliott said.

But in response to a question about the budget, she said, "We are not spending enough on efforts to prevent chronic diseases and to find cures."

Mr. Bush is requesting $8.2 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2007, which is $179 million below this year's level.

Under the president's budget, the centers would spend $824 million to help state and local health departments prepare for a terrorist attack or an outbreak of infectious disease. That is the same amount provided this year and 10 percent less than in 2005.

Over all, the president's budget for 2007 is expected to total $2.7 trillion. In his first term, federal spending rose 33 percent — in part because of the Iraq war and domestic security costs — while federal revenues grew 8 percent. Revenues declined from 2000 to 2003, but surged last year, as the government collected more individual and corporate income taxes and payroll taxes in a growing economy.

Administration officials, Congressional aides and lobbyists offered this preview of likely budget proposals at other agencies:

¶Mr. Bush is expected to request $16.8 billion for the space agency, an increase of one percent. Cost overruns on the shuttle have squeezed the money available for other space programs.

¶In place of various federal job programs, Mr. Bush will ask Congress to establish "career advancement accounts." The White House said that 800,000 people a year — workers and people looking for work — could use these accounts to pay for training or tuition costs if they went back to school to gain new skills.

¶For the fourth year in a row, Mr. Bush will ask Congress to require some veterans to pay more for medical care. Middle-income veterans with no service-connected disability would face higher co-payments for prescription drugs and a new fee for the privilege of using government health care.

"These people are already paying substantial annual deductibles and fees and co-payments for medical services and prescription drugs," said Richard B. Fuller, legislative director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America. "The new charges would force some veterans out of the V.A. system because they can't pay or choose not to pay the new costs."

At the Department of Health and Human Services, officials have sought savings in many popular programs. Budget documents show that the administration wants to cut spending for the Office of Minority Health and the training of health care professionals.

Moreover, the documents say, Mr. Bush will propose eliminating programs to treat people with traumatic brain injuries and to improve emergency medical services for children.

The administration said it had found no evidence that these programs improved "the health or well-being" of the intended beneficiaries.

    Budget Reflects Competition for Money, NYT, 5.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/politics/05budget.html?hp&ex=1139115600&en=8c613ebaba51a865&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush signs extension of anti-terrorism law

Sat Feb 4, 2006 2:15 AM ET
Reuters

WACO, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush signed an extension on Friday of an anti-terrorism law enacted after the September 11 attacks that critics say infringes on civil liberties.

The White House said Bush signed the legislation to extend until March 10 the provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which was set to expire on Friday.

Bush was at his Crawford, Texas, ranch after stops earlier in Dallas and New Mexico to press for his State of the Union agenda.

He has sought a permanent renewal of the Patriot Act, saying it provides necessary tools for fighting terrorism. But some lawmakers want additional time to resolve concerns about protecting civil liberties before making most of the provisions permanent.

Bush acted one day after the Senate approved the bill passed earlier by the House of Representatives that provided a brief extension of the expiring provisions.

The Patriot Act expanded the power of federal authorities in conducting wiretaps and secret searches.

Critics have expressed concern over what they say is the government's ability to obtain an individual's private records in a terrorism investigation when it had not been determined that the person had ties to terrorism.

    Bush signs extension of anti-terrorism law, R, 4.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-02-04T071515Z_01_N03315352_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-PATRIOT.xml

Bush, Resetting Agenda, Says U.S. Must Cut Reliance on Oil

February 1, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 — President Bush offered the nation a modest menu of energy, health and education proposals and warned against the "false comfort of isolationism" on Tuesday in a State of the Union address that sought to reassert his control over the nation's agenda heading into a pivotal midterm election campaign.

In one of his most striking declarations, Mr. Bush said "America is addicted to oil" and set a goal of replacing 75 percent of the nation's Mideast oil imports by 2025 with ethanol and other energy sources.

But even that goal was less ambitious than it might have appeared — the United States gets less than 20 percent of its oil from the Persian Gulf — and the speech was notable largely for a lack of big new proposals from a president who for five years has not shied from provocative and politically risky initiatives.

The president devoted nearly half of the 52-minute address to a restatement of his foreign policy. He called for freedom around the world, warned against the threat of "radical Islam" and again invoked the memory of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. To his familiar call about ending "tyranny in our world," Mr. Bush added a new framework that sought to address the anxieties created by a rapidly changing economy and an aging society. The answer, Mr. Bush said, was not to turn inward.

"In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline," he said. "The only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership, so the United States of America will continue to lead."

The only alternative to American leadership, he said, "is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world."

But Mr. Bush was more tempered and less partisan than a year ago, evidence of his diminished political standing. On Tuesday night, in an echo of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's response after the United States was stunned by the launching of Sputnik in 1957, Mr. Bush called for initiatives to deal with a new threat: intensifying competition from countries like China and India. He proposed a substantial increase in financing for basic science research, called for training 70,000 new high school Advanced Placement teachers and recruiting 30,000 math and science professionals into the nation's classrooms.

He warned that the two parties must find a way to work together to deal with the rapidly rising costs of supporting an aging society and called for a bipartisan commission to come up with proposals for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He pushed his proposals to give individuals more control over and responsibility for their own health care costs through savings accounts and tax incentives. And at a time when high global energy prices are slowing the economy and pinching consumers, he pushed for greater energy independence.

"Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it," the president said.

The speech was notable for what Mr. Bush did not mention. He offered no new ideas for rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, made no mention of his troubled Medicare prescription drug program and offered no proposal to clamp down on lobbying abuses in Congress that have led to the investigation of Jack Abramoff, a formerly powerful lobbyist and a major fund-raiser for Mr. Bush. Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty on Jan. 3 to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion, and prosecutors have said he used campaign contributions, lavish trips and meals to influence lawmakers and their aides.

Mr. Bush delivered his address after one of the most difficult years of his presidency but on a day of political triumph, just hours after his nominee, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., was confirmed by the Senate as the 110th justice in the history of the Supreme Court. Justice Alito, dressed in the sweeping black robes of his new court, sat with other justices in the front rows of the chamber of the House of Representatives.

The president strode into the packed chamber shortly after 9 p.m. for the traditional back-slapping, hand-grabbing, cheek-kissing walk down the aisle. The promenade under the bright television lights effectively kicked off Mr. Bush's last campaign as a sitting president to gain support in Congress for his party's agenda. He did so before an audience of dogged Democrats seated across the aisle from nervous Republicans, who find themselves mired in a contentious leadership battle and the influence-peddling investigation in their top ranks on Capitol Hill.

In a vivid display of increasing assertiveness against the president, the Democratic side of the House rose to its feet in applause when Mr. Bush made what he intended to be a conciliatory reference to the defeat of his Social Security proposal last year. Mr. Bush appeared taken aback before finally wagging his finger at them and saying, "The rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away."

In foreign policy, Mr. Bush broke no new ground, and used language drawn from previous speeches. He held out the possibility of reducing the 140,000 American troops in Iraq over the next year, but made no promises. He grimly warned Iran not to pursue its nuclear weapons ambitions, calling it "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people." And he called on the militant Islamic group Hamas, the overwhelming victor in last week's elections by Palestinians, to "recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism and work for lasting peace."

Mr. Bush continued his vigorous defense of his administration's secret program of eavesdropping without warrants and suggested that it could have caught some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, although he provided few details. "We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to Al Qaeda operatives overseas," Mr. Bush said. "But we did not know about their plans until it was too late."

The president built on the theme of his second inaugural address, and even in the face of the Hamas victory issued a strong call for democracy and elections in the Middle East. "In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies on earth," Mr. Bush said. "Today there are 122."

Mr. Bush also repeated that his administration's war on terrorism was not creating more terrorists, as critics of his policies contend.

"In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders," Mr. Bush said. "If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores."

On domestic policy, Mr. Bush offered a panoply of proposals in health care, energy and education that reflected the restrictions imposed on him by the growing budget deficit and a Congress that will be reluctant to take on divisive new legislation in an election year.

Mr. Bush cast his education proposals as essential to maintaining American competitiveness in a world economy in which jobs are migrating to developing nations like India and China.

"We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity," Mr. Bush said. "Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people and we are going to keep that edge."

In health care, Mr. Bush proposed changes in legislation to make it easier for employers to offer, and for individuals to buy, health savings accounts, which offer tax incentives to people to put aside money for medical expenses.

"Our government has a responsibility to help provide health care for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that responsibility," Mr. Bush said. "For all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship and help people afford the insurance coverage they need."

In energy policy, a major part of his address, Mr. Bush promoted the construction of nuclear power plants and renewed a call for the development of alternative fuel for automobiles, including ethanol, which is made from corn, as well as the development of fuel made from the waste of plant crops.

Energy analysts also said Mr. Bush's goal to replace 75 percent of America's Mideast oil imports by 2025 was not as meaningful as it appeared because the bigger suppliers to the United States are Mexico, Canada and Venezuela.

But for Mr. Bush, the emphasis on reducing foreign dependence on oil, particularly in the often volatile Persian Gulf, reflected a critical political dynamic this year: Republicans have been increasingly alarmed that escalating gas and home heating prices could prove a major issue in Congressional elections this year, particularly as oil companies are reporting record profits.

The president returned to the issue of Social Security again on Tuesday, the proposal that collapsed under the weight of Democratic opposition and tepid support from his own party and the public last year. In contrast to last year, when he rejected similar proposals, Mr. Bush called for a bipartisan commission to examine ways to deal with Social Security, along with Medicare and Medicaid. Numerous commissions in the past two decades have looked at the problem, but none has been able to rally bipartisan support for either benefit cuts or tax increases to deal with the financial problems looming over the social welfare programs.

Those three programs, Mr. Bush warned, would soon swamp the federal budget if Congress failed to act as millions of Baby Boomers turn 60 and prepare for retirement.

"This year, the first of about 78 million baby boomers turn 60, including two of my dad's favorite people: me, and President Bill Clinton," Mr. Bush said. "This milestone is more than a personal crisis — it is a national challenge. The retirement of the baby boom generation will put unprecedented strains on the federal government."

    Bush, Resetting Agenda, Says U.S. Must Cut Reliance on Oil, NYT, 1.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/politics/01bush.html?hp&ex=1138856400&en=63a58c61bd383fa3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

President Warns About Dangers for Nation in Isolationism

February 1, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 — President Bush offered the nation a modest menu of energy, health and education proposals and warned against the "false comfort of isolationism" in a State of the Union address on Tuesday that sought to reassert his control over the nation's agenda heading into a pivotal midterm election campaign.

In one of his most striking declarations, Mr. Bush said that "America is addicted to oil" and set a goal of replacing 75 percent of the nation's Mideast oil imports by 2025 with ethanol and other energy sources.

But even that goal was more modest than it might have appeared — the United States gets less than 20 percent of its oil from the Persian Gulf — and the speech was notable largely for a lack of big new proposals from a president who for five years has not shied from provocative and politically risky initiatives.

To his familiar call about ending "tyranny in our world," Mr. Bush added a new framework that sought to address the anxieties created by a rapidly changing economy and an aging society. The answer, Mr. Bush, was not to turn inward.

"In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline," Mr. Bush said. "The only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership, so the United States of America will continue to lead." [Transcript, Pages A20 and A21.]

The only alternative to American leadership, he said, "is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world."

In an echo of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's response after the United States was stunned by the launching of Sputnik in 1957, Mr. Bush called for an increase in financing for basic science and for better teaching of science and math in the nation's schools.

He warned that the two parties must find a way to work together to deal with the rapidly rising costs of supporting an aging society. He pushed his proposals to give individuals more control over and responsibility for their own health care costs. And at a time when high global energy prices are slowing the economy and pinching consumers, he pushed for greater energy independence.

"Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it," the president said.

The speech was also notable for what Mr. Bush did not mention. He offered no new ideas for rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and made no proposal to clamp down on lobbying abuses in Congress that have led to the investigation of Jack Abramoff, a formerly powerful lobbyist and a major fund-raiser for Mr. Bush. Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty on Jan. 3 to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion, and prosecutors have said that he used campaign contributions, lavish trips and meals to influence lawmakers and their aides.

Mr. Bush delivered his address after one of the most difficult years of his presidency but on a day of political triumph, just hours after his nominee, Samuel A. Alito Jr., was confirmed by the Senate as the 110th justice in the history of the Supreme Court. Justice Alito, dressed in the sweeping black robes of his new court, took his seat with the other justices in the front row of the chamber of the House of Representatives.

The president strode into the packed chamber shortly after 9 p.m. for the traditional back-slapping, hand-grabbing, cheek-kissing walk down the aisle. The promenade under the bright television lights effectively kicked off Mr. Bush's last campaign as a sitting president to gain support in Congress for his agenda, this time before an audience of dogged Democrats and nervous Republicans, who find themselves mired in a contentious leadership battle and the influence-peddling investigation.

Mr. Bush stepped before Congress a far less popular president than during his State of the Union address just a year ago, when he was emboldened by his victory over Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts in the 2004 presidential race. He spoke optimistically then about the war in Iraq and about rewriting the nation's Social Security system, a signature initiative that failed.

When it came to foreign policy, Mr. Bush broke no new ground, and used language drawn from previous speeches. He held out the possibility of reducing the 140,000 American troops in Iraq over the next year, but made no promises. He grimly warned Iran not to pursue its nuclear weapons ambitions, calling it "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people." And he called on the militant Islamic group Hamas, the overwhelming victor in last week's elections by Palestinians, to "recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism and work for lasting peace."

Mr. Bush continued his vigorous defense of his administration's secret program of eavesdropping without warrants and suggested that it could have caught some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, although he provided few details. "We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to Al Qaeda operatives overseas," Mr. Bush said. "But we did not know about their plans until it was too late."

The president built on the theme of his second inaugural address, and even in the face of the Hamas victory issued a strong call for democracy and elections in the Middle East. "In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies on earth," Mr. Bush said. "Today there are 122."

Mr. Bush also reiterated that his administration's war on terrorism was not creating more terrorists, as critics of his policies believe.

"In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders," Mr. Bush said. "If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores."

On domestic policy, Mr. Bush offered a panoply of proposals in health care, energy and education that reflected the restrictions imposed on him by the growing budget deficit and a Congress that will be reluctant to take on divisive new legislation in an election year.

Mr. Bush called for the federal government to pay the costs of training 70,000 new high school teachers for Advanced Placement courses and for recruiting 30,000 math and science professionals as resources in school classrooms. He cast the proposal as essential to maintaining American competitiveness in a world economy that includes new powerhouses like India and China.

"We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity," Mr. Bush said. "Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people and we are going to keep that edge."

In health care, Mr. Bush proposed changes in legislation to make it easier for employers to offer, and for individuals to buy, health savings accounts, which offer tax incentives to people to put aside money for medical expenses.

"Our government has a responsibility to help provide health care for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that responsibility," Mr. Bush said. "For all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship and help people afford the insurance coverage they need."

In energy policy, a major part of his address, Mr. Bush promoted the construction of nuclear power plants and renewed a call for the development of alternative fuel for automobiles, including ethanol, which is made from corn, as well as the development of fuel made from the waste of plant crops. Mr. Bush said he was optimistic about fuel made from plant waste, like corn leaves and stalks, but research is still in the early stages and energy analysts say it is years away from commercial use.

Energy analysts also said that Mr. Bush's goal to replace 75 percent of America's Mideast oil imports by 2025 was not as meaningful as it appeared because the bigger suppliers to the United States are Mexico, Canada and Venezuela.

But for Mr. Bush, the emphasis on reducing foreign dependence on oil, particularly in the often volatile Persian Gulf, reflected a critical political dynamic this year: Republicans have been increasingly alarmed that escalating gas and home heating prices could prove a major issue in Congressional elections this year, particularly as oil companies are reporting record profits.

In a vivid display of increasing assertiveness against the president, the Democratic side of the House rose to its feet in applause when Mr. Bush made what he intended to be a conciliatory reference to the defeat of his Social Security proposal last year. Mr. Bush appeared taken aback before finally wagging his finger at them and saying, "The rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away."

When Americans were asked to name the one or two everyday expenses that should be the top priority of the federal government to address in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday, 34 percent named gasoline and 20 percent named home heating costs.

Democrats have long cast Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as friends of the oil industry at the expense of consumers, and they renewed that line of attack in response to the president's call to do more to achieve energy independence. Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who is the leader of his party's Congressional campaign committee, noted that Republicans had pressed for tax breaks for oil companies even as their profits were surging.

Mr. Bush argued that the nation was in fact prosperous, but that Americans were anxious in the face of structural changes in the economy. He said that uneasiness helped account for the opposition to trade, calls for federal controls on the economy and the sharp opposition to immigration seen in many states.

"All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction toward a stagnant and second-rate economy," he said.

Mr. Bush called again for making permanent the temporary tax cuts that were passed in the first years of his administration, but that are scheduled to expire.

Mr. Bush, who has been under criticism from conservatives in his own party for allowing deficits to mount over the first year in office, did not specify which programs he had in mind, though he is likely to set them out in the budget proposal he will send to Congress on Monday.

Mr. Bush, treading into an area that has created divisions within his own party, called again for an amnesty program that would allow illegal immigrants to work temporarily.

"We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy, even though this economy could not function without them," he said.

    President Warns About Dangers for Nation in Isolationism, NYT, 1.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/politics/01bush.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

News Analysis

Bold Visions Have Given Way to Global and Political Realities

February 1, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 — It was an evening for President Bush to confront America's anxieties — and his own. Only a year after Mr. Bush stood in the well of the House, describing in bold terms how he planned to spend the political capital he had amassed in the 2004 election, the president who addressed the nation on Tuesday evening was far less ambitious, his tone noticeably different.

The Texan who swept onto the national political scene six years ago talking about drilling for new energy supplies and preserving the American way of life vowed on Tuesday night to wean the nation from its reliance on oil. Instead of urging Congress to drill in the Arctic, the president who waved off the critics who portrayed him and Vice President Dick Cheney as captives of the oil industry asked Congress to finance federal research into alternative fuels and lithium batteries.

A president who has rarely dwelled on the impact of globalization for American workers suddenly was looking over his shoulder at China and India, and committing the federal government to a quest for 70,000 teachers and 30,000 scientists to prepare American students for a new era of competition.

It was, in short, a speech rooted in some hard global and political realities, and one unlikely to become one of Mr. Bush's most memorable. Instead of evoking the grand ambitions that have suffused his presidency, Mr. Bush emphasized the familiar and the modest. He also offered an olive branch, reviving an old pledge to lower the partisan temperature. "Our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger," he said.

By any measure, Mr. Bush's options are far more limited than they were a year ago. Much of the momentum he boasted about in the days after his re-election is gone, some of it lost on a bold Social Security initiative that never took off, some washed away by the deeply disorganized federal response to Hurricane Katrina. The budget deficit, rising again despite Mr. Bush's promise to cut it in half by the time he leaves office in 2009, effectively handcuffs him when it comes to new initiatives. The few new ideas he unveiled were largely thematic, not backed by broad programmatic initiatives.

Three years into the war in Iraq, Mr. Bush tried to strike a tone of optimism, saying that "we are in this fight, and we are winning." But he also bowed to the country's anxiety about finding a path out of a mission that seems to become harder each day, and warned anew of the dangers of premature retreat. "In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders," he said.

Mr. Bush's approval ratings, which soared over 90 percent in the days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, bounced around in the 30's in the fall and now hover anemically in the low 40's. His party, beset by a lobbying scandal and a breakdown in discipline on Capitol Hill, is nervous about the upcoming midterm election.

With three years left in his presidency, Mr. Bush is certainly far from that lame-duck moment he used to joke about on his campaign plane — that moment in his second term when he said he would "quack like a duck." On Tuesday alone, he won two major victories, the confirmations of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the Supreme Court and Ben S. Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Both appointments promise to leave Mr. Bush's stamp on Washington long after he has retired to his ranch and begun building his presidential library.

But in acknowledging on Tuesday that Americans face "a complex and challenging time," Mr. Bush was doing more than issuing a call for global engagement. He was also acknowledging that five years into his presidency, the citizens of the world's most powerful nation do not feel that their status has brought them security.

"He needed to reassure us on the economy, and reassure people there is a future they can be positive about," said Michael Deaver, the image maker who helped make Ronald Reagan — on whom Mr. Bush has tried to model much of his presidency — a master of optimism. "People have been saying no to that question everyone asks — 'Am I going to be better off a year from now than I am today?' — and that has been going on for the past two or three years."

Mr. Bush's prescriptions Tuesday night were largely familiar: making tax cuts permanent, keeping markets open, keeping health care costs down. What was new was his Advanced Energy Initiative, though the increases he proposed in clean-energy research, better batteries for hybrid cars and new ways of making ethanol largely piggyback on programs already under way at General Motors and Ford, Toyota and Honda, rather than charting a new course.

And his proposals to "encourage children to take more math and science" had echoes of President Bill Clinton, whose incessant talk of remaking the work force to meet the challenges of a global economy were often referred to derisively during Mr. Bush's first term as feel-good economics.

"Second-term presidents often gravitate toward foreign policy," said Doug Sosnik, who drafted many of those policies for Mr. Clinton. "What's happened to this president is that there is more pressure to attend to the domestic needs of the country. And it's hard, because he has less room to operate and less money to spend."

Mr. Bush has more leeway in the area of foreign policy, but even here, limits loom larger than they did a year ago.

Facing public hearings in February on his once-secret program to conduct eavesdropping, without the benefit of warrants, on calls between the United States and abroad, Mr. Bush defended his order anew as "a terrorist surveillance program." He also argued, in an expansive reading of existing case law, that he acted "based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute," which he said the federal courts had approved.

In the face of Iran's defiance of full international inspection of its nuclear program, Mr. Bush declared that "the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons." But in contrast to the confrontational tone that suffused his State of the Union speech of January 2003, which made the case for confronting Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Mr. Bush made no threats about what would happen if Iran continued down its current path.

Instead, he struck a moderate tone, careful not to outstep the European allies with whom he is trying to repair relations. And he seemed to recognize, said Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations, that "clearly Iran has more ways of making our lives difficult in Iraq."

Mr. Bush has more time left in his presidency than John F. Kennedy served in his. Three years is a lot of time, and as Mr. Bush proved after Sept. 11, it only takes one day to remake a presidency. But the path he described Tuesday night aimed more toward the middle lanes he talked about so often in the early days of his presidency, rather than the big moments of change that have marked the past four years.

    Bold Visions Have Given Way to Global and Political Realities, NYT, 1.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/politics/01assess.html

The Scene

Antiwar Protester Arrested Before Speech, but Her Presence Looms Large

February 1, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ANNE KORNBLUT

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31—To spotlight his priorities, President Bush invited ordinary people — a teacher, a physicist, an Afghan politician, the family of a fallen soldier — to the State of the Union address on Tuesday. But a Democratic congresswoman turned the tables on Mr. Bush by inviting a guest of her own: Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar protester who has dogged Mr. Bush from his Texas ranch to the White House.

Ms. Sheehan's presence loomed large in the House chamber, though she was not there. Capitol Police arrested her before the speech began, ejecting her from the gallery after they discovered her wearing an antiwar T-shirt. A police spokeswoman said Ms. Sheehan was charged with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor.

The episode sent the Capitol into a tizzy, and the congresswoman who invited Ms. Sheehan, Representative Lynn Woolsey of California, insisted she was not trying to make Mr. Bush uncomfortable. "I didn't see this as a political statement at all," Ms. Woolsey said.

But on a night when the president was trying to reassert himself, in a critical midterm election year with lawmakers nervous about their prospects, there was no escaping politics.

When Mr. Bush entered the House chamber on Tuesday night, his latest political trophy — Samuel A. Alito Jr., newly confirmed and sworn in as a justice of the Supreme Court — was on full display, a powerful reminder that Mr. Bush can still flex his muscles on Capitol Hill. Justice Alito smiled sheepishly as the president singled him out in the speech. "It's like a prizefighter showing his belt," said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota.

But the prizefighter has taken more than a few punches in recent months, and Democrats were rowdier than usual. Although Mr. Bush hit as many notes as he could to rally the chamber — paying tribute to Coretta Scott King, demanding changes from the newly elected Palestinian leadership and a defiant Iran — Mr. Bush gave Democrats several openings to get the better of him.

And they took them. When he defended the National Security Agency eavesdropping program, several Democratic members audibly groaned. When he scolded Congress for not passing his Social Security program, Democrats leaped to their feet in cheers, drowning the president out for a long stretch.

The president arrived in the Capitol at a chaotic moment for Congressional Republicans, who are absorbed by the fallout from the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and consumed with the outcome of leadership elections scheduled for Thursday. So the mood on Capitol Hill was palpably different from last year, when Mr. Bush, fresh from his 2004 re-election victory, was talking about how he had political capital and intended to use it. "There ain't no capital," Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, said. "As a matter of fact, he's coming here to borrow."

Republicans would hardly concede that point, but they did show a little less spring in their steps. "We're still exuberant," said Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi. "But we have a little bit more realization that it's tough getting things done in Washington."

The State of the Union address is often as much symbolism as substance, an occasion for the president to use his invited guests to put a human face on his domestic and foreign policy priorities.

On Tuesday, Mr. Bush did just that, with a compelling counterpoint to Ms. Sheehan: the parents and widow of Dan Clay, a 27-year-old Marine staff sergeant who was among 10 soldiers killed in Falluja when a roadside bomb exploded Dec. 1. When Mr. Bush read aloud from a letter Sergeant Clay had written before his death — "I faced death with the secure knowledge that you would not have to," the sergeant had written — the soldier's mother gently put her hand over her heart.

The invited guests also included several soldiers, among them a wounded Air Force technical sergeant, Jamie Dana, who later adopted Rex, her bomb-sniffing dog. Rex was on the guest list, too, and made a well-behaved appearance in the chamber.

Republicans, who regard national security as the president's greatest strength, welcomed his effort to seize the spotlight in that arena. But with gas prices rising and health care costs spiraling upward, some could not help but sound a bit weary.

"It's a State of the Union address," said Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia. "Like the old saying goes, you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. This is poetry. He's got to fill in the bones now."

    Antiwar Protester Arrested Before Speech, but Her Presence Looms Large, NYT, 1.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/politics/01scene.html

Transcript

'We Strive to Be a Compassionate, Decent, Hopeful Society'

January 31, 2006
The New York Times

Following is a transcript of President Bush's State of the Union address, as recorded by The New York Times:

Today our nation lost a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream. Tonight we are comforted by the hope of a glad reunion with the husband who was taken so long ago, and we are grateful for the good life of Coretta Scott King.

Every time I'm invited to this rostrum, I am humbled by the privilege and mindful of the history we've seen together. We have gathered under this Capitol dome in moments of national mourning and national achievement. We have served America through one of the most consequential periods of our history, and it has been my honor to serve with you.

In a system of two parties, two chambers and two elected branches, there will always be differences and debate. But even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger. To confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of good will and respect for one another, and I will do my part. Tonight the state of our union is strong, and together we will make it stronger.

In this decisive year, you and I will make choices that determine both the future and the character of our country. We will choose to act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom, or retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life. We will choose to build our prosperity by leading the world economy, or shut ourselves off from trade and opportunity. In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline. The only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership. So the United States of America will continue to lead.

Abroad, our nation is committed to a historic long-term goal. We seek the end of tyranny in our world. Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism. In reality, the future security of America depends on it. On Sept. 11, 2001, we found that problems originating in a failed and oppressive state 7,000 miles away could bring murder and destruction to our country. Dictatorships shelter terrorists and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors and join the fight against terror. Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer, so we will act boldly in freedom's cause.

Far from being a hopeless dream, the advance of freedom is the great story of our time. In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies in the world. Today, there are 122. And we're writing a new chapter in the story of self-government, with women lining up to vote in Afghanistan and millions of Iraqis marking their liberty with purple ink and men and women from Lebanon to Egypt debating the rights of individuals and the necessity of freedom. At the start of 2006, more than half the people of our world live in democratic nations. And we do not forget the other half, in places like Syria and Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran, because the demands of justice, and the peace of this world require their freedom as well.

Terrorism

No one can deny the success of freedom, but some men rage and fight against it. And one of the main sources of reaction and opposition is radical Islam, the perversion by a few of a noble faith into an ideology of terror and death. Terrorists like bin Laden are serious about mass murder, and all of us must take their declared intentions seriously. They seek to impose a heartless system of totalitarian control throughout the Middle East and arm themselves with weapons of mass murder.

Their aim is to seize power in Iraq and use it as a safe haven to launch attacks against America and the world. Lacking the military strength to challenge us directly, the terrorists have chosen the weapon of fear. When they murder children at a school in Beslan or blow up commuters in London or behead a bound captive, the terrorists hope these horrors will break our will, allowing the violent to inherit the earth. But they have miscalculated. We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it.

In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders. If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores. There is no peace in retreat. And there is no honor in retreat. By allowing radical Islam to work its will, by leaving an assaulted world to fend for itself, we would signal to all that we no longer believe in our own ideals or even in our own courage. But our enemies and our friends can be certain the United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil.

America rejects the false comfort of isolationism. We are the nation that saved liberty in Europe and liberated death camps and helped raise up democracies and faced down an evil empire. Once again, we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed and move this world toward peace.

We remain on the offensive against terror networks. We have killed or captured many of their leaders. And for the others, their day will come. We remain on the offensive in Afghanistan, where a fine president and a National Assembly are fighting terror while building the institutions of a new democracy.

We're on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory. First, we're helping Iraqis build an inclusive government, so that old resentments will be eased and the insurgency will be marginalized. Second, we're continuing reconstruction efforts and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefits of freedom. And third, we're striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy. Iraqis are showing their courage every day, and we are proud to be their allies in the cause of freedom.

Our work in Iraq is difficult, because our enemy is brutal. But that brutality has not stopped the dramatic progress of a new democracy. In less than three years, the nation has gone from dictatorship to liberation to sovereignty to a constitution to national elections. At the same time, our coalition has been relentless in shutting off terrorist infiltration, clearing out insurgent strongholds and turning over territory to Iraqi security forces. I am confident in our plan for victory. I am confident in the will of the Iraqi people. I am confident in the skill and spirit of our military. Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning.

The road of victory is the road that will take our troops home. As we make progress on the ground and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels. But those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by politicians in Washington, D.C.

Our coalition has learned from experience in Iraq. We've adjusted our military tactics and changed our approach to reconstruction. Along the way, we have benefited from responsible criticism and counsel offered by members of Congress of both parties. In the coming year, I will continue to reach out and seek your good advice.

Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second guessing is not a strategy.

With so much in the balance, those of us in public office have a duty to speak with candor. A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison, would put men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country and show that a pledge from America means little. Members of Congress, however we feel about the decisions and debates of the past, our nation has only one option. We must keep our word, defeat our enemies and stand behind the American military in this vital mission.

Military Sacrifices

Our men and women in uniform are making sacrifices and showing a sense of duty stronger than all fear. They know what it's like to fight house to house in a maze of streets, to wear heavy gear in the desert heat, to see a comrade killed by a roadside bomb. And those who know the costs also know the stakes.

Marine Staff Sgt. Dan Clay was killed last month fighting in Fallujah. He left behind a letter to his family, but his words could just as well be addressed to every American. Here"s what Dan wrote: "I know what honor is. It has been an honor to protect and serve all of you. I faced death with the secure knowledge that you would not have to. Never falter. Don't hesitate to honor and support those of us who had the honor of protecting that which is worth protecting."

Staff Sgt. Dan Clay's wife, Lisa, and his mom and dad, Sara Jo and Bud, are with us this evening. Welcome. Our nation is grateful to the fallen, who live in the memory of our country. We're grateful to all who volunteer to wear our nation's uniform, and as we honor our brave troops, let us never forget the sacrifices of America's military families.

Our offensive against terror involves more than military action. Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change. So the United States of America supports democratic reform across the broader Middle East.

Elections are vital, but they are only the beginning. Raising up a democracy requires the rule of law, protection of minorities and strong, accountable institutions that last longer than a single vote. The great people of Egypt have voted in a multiparty presidential election, and now their government should open paths of peaceful opposition that will reduce the appeal of radicalism.

The Palestinian people have voted in elections, and now the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism and work for lasting peace. Saudi Arabia has taken the first steps of reform. Now it can offer its people a better future by pressing forward with those efforts. Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own, because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens. Yet liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is the right and hope of all humanity.

The same is true of Iran, a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people. The regime in that country sponsors terrorists in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon, and that must come to an end. The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats.

Tonight, let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran. America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran.

To overcome dangers in our world, we must also take the offensive by encouraging economic progress and fighting disease and spreading hope in hopeless lands. Isolationism would not only tie our hands in fighting enemies, it would keep us from helping our friends in desperate need. We show compassion abroad, because Americans believe in the God-given dignity and worth of a villager with H.I.V./AIDS or an infant with malaria or a refugee fleeing genocide or a young girl sold into slavery. We also show compassion abroad because regions overwhelmed by poverty, corruption and despair are sources of terrorism and organized crime and human trafficking and the drug trade.

In recent years, you and I have taken unprecedented action to fight AIDS and malaria, expand the education of girls and reward developing nations that are moving forward with economic and political reform. For people everywhere, the United States is a partner for a better life. Shortchanging these efforts would increase the suffering and chaos of our world, undercut our long-term security and dull the conscience of our country. I urge members of Congress to serve the interests of America by showing the compassion of America.

Our country must also remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home. The enemy has not lost the desire or capability to attack us. Fortunately, this nation has superb professionals in law enforcement, intelligence, the military and homeland security. These men and women are dedicating their lives to protecting us all, and they deserve our support and our thanks. They also deserve the same tools they already use to fight drug trafficking and organized crime. So I ask you to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

It is said that prior to the attacks of Sept. 11 our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to Al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack, based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute, I have authorized a terrorist-surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected Al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America. Previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have, and federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed. This terrorist-surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with Al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

In all these areas, from the disruption of terror networks to victory in Iraq to the spread of freedom and hope in troubled regions, we need the support of our friends and allies. To draw that support, we must always be clear in our principles and willing to act. The only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world. Yet we also choose to lead, because it is a privilege to serve the values that gave us birth. American leaders from Roosevelt to Truman to Kennedy to Reagan rejected isolation and retreat, because they knew that America is always more secure when freedom is on the march. Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy, a war that will be fought by presidents of both parties, who will need steady bipartisan support from the Congress. And tonight I ask for yours. Together, let us protect our country, support the men and women who defend us and lead this world toward freedom.

Here at home, America also has a great opportunity. We will build the prosperity of our country by strengthening our economic leadership in the world.

Our economy is healthy and vigorous, and growing faster than other major industrialized nations. In the last two and a half years, America has created 4.6 million new jobs, more than Japan and the European Union combined. Even in the face of higher energy prices and natural disasters, the American people have turned in an economic performance that is the envy of the world.

The American economy is pre-eminent, but we cannot afford to be complacent. In a dynamic world economy, we are seeing new competitors like China and India. And this creates uncertainty, which makes it easier to feed people's fears. So we're seeing some old temptations return. Protectionists want to escape competition, pretending that we can keep our high standard of living while walling off our economy. Others say that the government needs to take a larger role in directing the economy, centralizing more power in Washington and increasing taxes. We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy, even though this economy could not function without them. All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction, toward a stagnant and second-rate economy.

Economic Agenda

Tonight I will set out a better path, an agenda for a nation that competes with confidence, an agenda that will raise standards of living and generate new jobs. Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it.

Keeping America competitive begins with keeping our economy growing. And our economy grows when Americans have more of their own money to spend, save and invest. In the last five years, the tax relief you passed has left $880 billion in the hands of American workers, investors, small businesses and families. And they have used it to help produce more than four years of uninterrupted economic growth. Yet the tax relief is set to expire in the next few years. If we do nothing, American families will face a massive tax increase they do not expect and will not welcome.

Because America needs more than a temporary expansion, we need more than temporary tax relief. I urge the Congress to act responsibly, and make the tax cuts permanent.

Keeping America competitive requires us to be good stewards of tax dollars. Every year of my presidency, we've reduced the growth of nonsecurity discretionary spending, and last year you passed bills that cut this spending. This year, my budget will cut it again and reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities. By passing these reforms, we will save the American taxpayer another $14 billion next year and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009. I am pleased that members of Congress are working on earmark reform, because the federal budget has too many special interest projects. And we can tackle this problem together if you pass the line-item veto.

We must also confront the larger challenge of mandatory spending, or entitlements. This year, the first of about 78 million baby boomers turn 60, including two of my dad's favorite people, me, and President Clinton. This milestone is more than a personal crisis. It is a national challenge. The retirement of the baby boom generation will put unprecedented strains on the federal government. By 2030, spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone will be almost 60 percent of the entire federal budget. And that will present future Congresses with impossible choices — staggering tax increases, immense deficits or deep cuts in every category of spending.

Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security. Yet the rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away. And every year we fail to act, the situation gets worse. So tonight, I ask you to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This commission should include members of Congress of both parties and offer bipartisan answers. We need to put aside partisan politics and work together and get this problem solved.

Keeping America competitive requires us to open more markets for all that Americans make and grow. One out of every five factory jobs in America is related to global trade, and we want people everywhere to buy American. With open markets and a level playing field, no one can outproduce or outcompete the American worker.

Keeping America competitive requires an immigration system that upholds our laws, reflects our values and serves the interests of our economy. Our nation needs orderly and secure borders. To meet this goal, we must have stronger immigration enforcement and border protection. And we must have a rational, humane guest-worker program that rejects amnesty, allows temporary jobs for people who seek them legally and reduces smuggling and crime at the border.

Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care. Our government has a responsibility to help provide health care for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that responsibility. For all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship and help people afford the insurance coverage they need. We will make wider use of electronic records and other health information technology to help control costs and reduce dangerous medical errors. We will strengthen health savings accounts by making sure individuals and small business employees can buy insurance with the same advantages that people working for big businesses now get. We will do more to make this coverage portable, so workers can switch jobs without having to worry about losing their health insurance. And because lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice, leaving women in nearly 1,500 American counties without a single ob-gyn, I ask the Congress to pass medical liability reform this year.

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem. America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.

The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper and more reliable alternative energy sources. And we are on the threshold of incredible advances. So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative, a 22 percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies and clean, safe nuclear energy.

We must also change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We will also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years.

Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal, to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.

And to keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all. We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people, and we are going to keep that edge. Tonight I announce the American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy and to give our nation's children a firm grounding in math and science.

First, I propose to double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years. This funding will support the work of America's most creative minds as they explore promising areas such as nanotechnology and supercomputing and alternative energy sources. Second, I propose to make permanent the research and development tax credit to encourage bolder private-sector initiative in technology. With more research in both the public and private sectors, we will improve our quality of life and ensure that America will lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come.

Third, we need to encourage children to take more math and science and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations. We've made a good start in the early grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising standards and lifting test scores across our country. Tonight I propose to train 70,000 high school teachers to lead Advanced Placement courses in math and science, bring 30,000 math and science professionals to teach in classrooms and give early help to students who struggle with math, so they have a better chance at good high-wage jobs. If we ensure that America's children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world.

Preparing our nation to compete in the world is a goal that all of us can share. I urge you to support the American Competitiveness Initiative, and together we will show the world what the American people can achieve.

'A Hopeful Society'

America is a great force for freedom and prosperity. Yet our greatness is not measured in power or luxuries, but by who we are and how we treat one another. So we strive to be a compassionate, decent, hopeful society.

In recent years, America has become a more hopeful nation. Violent crime rates have fallen to their lowest levels since the 1970's. Welfare cases have dropped by more than half over the past decade. Drug use among youth is down 19 percent since 2001. There are fewer abortions in America than at any point in the last three decades, and the number of children born to teenage mothers has been falling for a dozen years in a row.

These gains are evidence of a quiet transformation, a revolution of conscience in which a rising generation is finding that a life of personal responsibility is a life of fulfillment. Government has played a role. Wise policies such as welfare reform, drug education and support for abstinence and adoption have made a difference in the character of our country. And everyone here tonight, Democrat and Republican, has a right to be proud of this record.

Yet many Americans, especially parents, still have deep concerns about the direction of our culture and the health of our most basic institutions. They are concerned about unethical conduct by public officials and discouraged by activist courts that try to redefine marriage. They worry about children in our society, who need direction and love; and about fellow citizens still displaced by natural disaster; and about suffering caused by treatable disease.

As we look at these challenges, we must never give in to the belief that America is in decline or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before, and we will do it again.

A hopeful society depends on courts that deliver equal justice under the law. The Supreme Court now has two superb new members on its bench, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito. I thank the Senate for confirming both of them. I will continue to nominate men and women who understand that judges must be servants of the law, and not legislate from the bench.

Today marks the official retirement of a very special American. For 24 years of faithful service to our nation, the United States is grateful to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners and that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our creator, and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale.

A hopeful society expects elected officials to uphold the public trust. Honorable people in both parties are working on reforms to strengthen the ethical standards of Washington, and I support your efforts. Each of us has made a pledge to be worthy of public responsibility, and that is a pledge we must never forget, never dismiss and never betray.

As we renew the promise of our institutions, let us also show the character of America in our compassion and care for one another.

A hopeful society gives special attention to children who lack direction and love. Through the Helping America's Youth Initiative, we are encouraging caring adults to get involved in the life of a child, and this good work is being led by our first lady, Laura Bush. This year, we will add resources to encourage young people to stay in school so more of America's youth can raise their sights and achieve their dreams.

A hopeful society comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and emergency and stays at it until they are back on their feet. So far the federal government has committed $85 billion to the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. We are removing debris and repairing highways and rebuilding stronger levees. We're providing business loans and housing assistance. Yet as we meet these immediate needs, we must also address deeper challenges that existed before the storm arrived. In New Orleans and in other places, many of our fellow citizens have felt excluded from the promise of our country.

The answer is not only temporary relief, but schools that teach every child and job skills that bring upward mobility and more opportunities to own a home and start a business. As we recover from a disaster, let us also work for the day when all Americans are protected by justice, equal in hope and rich in opportunity.

A hopeful society acts boldly to fight diseases like H.I.V./AIDS which can be prevented and treated and defeated. More than a million Americans live with H.I.V., and half of all AIDS cases occur among African-Americans. I ask Congress to reform and reauthorize the Ryan White Act and provide new funding to states, so we end the waiting lists for AIDS medicine in America. We will also lead a nationwide effort, working closely with African-American churches and faith-based groups, to deliver rapid H.I.V. tests to millions, end the stigma of AIDS and come closer to the day when there are no new infections in America.

Fellow citizens, we've been called to leadership in a period of consequence. We've entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite. We see great changes in science and commerce that will influence all our lives. Sometimes it can seem that history is turning in a wide arc, toward an unknown shore.

Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing. Lincoln could have accepted peace at the cost of disunity and continued slavery. Martin Luther King could have stopped at Birmingham or at Selma and achieved only half a victory over segregation. The United States could have accepted the permanent division of Europe and been complicit in the oppression of others. Today, having come far in our own historical journey, we must decide will we turn back or finish well?

Before history is written down in books, it is written in courage. Like Americans before us, we will show that courage and we will finish well. We will lead freedom's advance. We will compete and excel in the global economy. We will renew the defining moral commitments of this land. And so we move forward — optimistic about our country, faithful to its cause and confident of victories to come.

May God bless America.

    'We Strive to Be a Compassionate, Decent, Hopeful Society', NYT, 31.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/politics/text-bush.html

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him

January 29, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

He said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Mr. Acosta said other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. "This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming," he said. "It's about coordination."

Dr. Hansen strongly disagreed with this characterization, saying such procedures had already prevented the public from fully grasping recent findings about climate change that point to risks ahead.

"Communicating with the public seems to be essential," he said, "because public concern is probably the only thing capable of overcoming the special interests that have obfuscated the topic."

Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in Morningside Heights in Manhattan.

Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels. He has had run-ins with politicians or their appointees in various administrations, including budget watchers in the first Bush administration and Vice President Al Gore.

In 2001, Dr. Hansen was invited twice to brief Vice President Dick Cheney and other cabinet members on climate change. White House officials were interested in his findings showing that cleaning up soot, which also warms the atmosphere, was an effective and far easier first step than curbing carbon dioxide.

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled and said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry.

But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.

In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."

He said he was particularly incensed that the directives had come through telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

Dr. Hansen's supervisor, Franco Einaudi, said there had been no official "order or pressure to say shut Jim up." But Dr. Einaudi added, "That doesn't mean I like this kind of pressure being applied."

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet."

The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

Among the restrictions, according to Dr. Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews.

Mr. Acosta said the calls and meetings with Goddard press officers were not to introduce restrictions, but to review existing rules. He said Dr. Hansen had continued to speak frequently with the news media.

But Dr. Hansen and some of his colleagues said interviews were canceled as a result.

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority.

But she added: "I'm a career civil servant and Jim Hansen is a scientist. That's not our job. That's not our mission. The inference was that Hansen was disloyal."

Normally, Ms. McCarthy would not be free to describe such conversations to the news media, but she agreed to an interview after Mr. Acosta, at NASA headquarters, told The Times that she would not face any retribution for doing so.

Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's supervisor, said that when Mr. Deutsch was asked about the conversations, he flatly denied saying anything of the sort. Mr. Deutsch referred all interview requests to Mr. Acosta.

Ms. McCarthy, when told of the response, said: "Why am I going to go out of my way to make this up and back up Jim Hansen? I don't have a dog in this race. And what does Hansen have to gain?"

Mr. Acosta said that for the moment he had no way of judging who was telling the truth. Several colleagues of both Ms. McCarthy and Dr. Hansen said Ms. McCarthy's statements were consistent with what she told them when the conversations occurred.

"He's not trying to create a war over this," said Larry D. Travis, an astronomer who is Dr. Hansen's deputy at Goddard, "but really feels very strongly that this is an obligation we have as federal scientists, to inform the public."

Dr. Travis said he walked into Ms. McCarthy's office in mid-December at the end of one of the calls from Mr. Deutsch demanding that Dr. Hansen be better controlled.

In an interview on Friday, Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist and the president of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's leading independent scientific body, praised Dr. Hansen's scientific contributions and said he had always seemed to describe his public statements clearly as his personal views.

"He really is one of the most productive and creative scientists in the world," Dr. Cicerone said. "I've heard Hansen speak many times and I've read many of his papers, starting in the late 70's. Every single time, in writing or when I've heard him speak, he's always clear that he's speaking for himself, not for NASA or the administration, whichever administration it's been."

The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.

Where scientists' points of view on climate policy align with those of the administration, however, there are few signs of restrictions on extracurricular lectures or writing.

One example is Indur M. Goklany, assistant director of science and technology policy in the policy office of the Interior Department. For years, Dr. Goklany, an electrical engineer by training, has written in papers and books that it may be better not to force cuts in greenhouse gases because the added prosperity from unfettered economic activity would allow countries to exploit benefits of warming and adapt to problems.

In an e-mail exchange on Friday, Dr. Goklany said that in the Clinton administration he was shifted to nonclimate-related work, but added that he had never had to stop his outside writing, as long as he identified the views as his own.

"One reason why I still continue to do the extracurricular stuff," he wrote, "is because one doesn't have to get clearance for what I plan on saying or writing."

    Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him, NYT, 29.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?hp&ex=1138597200&en=df8f81d4867a2143&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Names 2 to Fill Fed Board Seats

January 28, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 (AP) — President Bush nominated an economics professor at the University of Chicago and a White House economics policy aide yesterday to fill two vacancies on the Federal Reserve's seven-member board of governors.

The nominees are Randall S. Kroszner, a professor in the University of Chicago's graduate school of business, and Kevin Warsh, a special assistant to the president for economic policy at the White House.

Mr. Kroszner is a previous member of the Council of Economic Advisers. He directs the university's George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the board of the National Association of Business Economists. He received a bachelor's degree from Brown University and a master's and doctorate from Harvard University.

Mr. Warsh, in his position at the White House, manages domestic finance, capital markets and banking issues. Previously, Mr. Warsh served as an executive director and vice president for mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley.

He received a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and a law degree from Harvard.

The nominations are subject to Senate approval.

    Bush Names 2 to Fill Fed Board Seats, NYT, 28.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/politics/28fed.html

Bush Presses On in Legal Defense for Wiretapping

January 28, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — President Bush, defending the wiretapping program he ordered soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, declared a few days ago that "there's no doubt in my mind it is legal." So resolute is Mr. Bush, in fact, that he and his senior aides made this assertion, or some variation of it, at least 48 times in the last week.

Despite the administration's arguments, many legal scholars — both conservatives and liberals — say they remain skeptical about Mr. Bush's assertion that the Constitution and a September 2001 authorization to use military force provided legal justification for wiretapping phone calls and e-mail messages on American soil without a warrant.

But if nothing else, legal and political analysts say, Bush administration officials appear to have succeeded in framing the legal debate on their own terms and daring critics of the National Security Agency operation to prove them wrong.

"It's a very astute strategy," said Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at the University of Georgia. "They don't have much to work with legally, but they're framing these justifications in constitutional terms to a public audience. That may serve them well."

The Bush administration has been vigorous in its legal defense of the surveillance program, first in a six-page Justice Department letter to Congress on Dec. 22, then in an expanded, 42-page "white paper" last week, and finally in a barrage of speeches, news conferences and news media appearances by Mr. Bush and his most senior aides this week.

On Friday, the Justice Department capped the week's blitz with a 27-point rebuttal to its critics labeled "Myth V. Reality."

The first "myth" listed: "The N.S.A. program is illegal."

A detailed analysis this month from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service challenged the administration's legal arguments. After this week's news media blitz, the White House's defense continues to draw mixed, and sometimes surprising reviews from legal scholars.

Some legal experts who have written in favor of an expansive conception of executive power voiced doubts about the surveillance program, and one of them said that the Justice Department's fullest defense, in its "white paper," cited his work out of context.

Another conservative scholar, enlisted by the Bush administration to defend the program, said that while he thought the program was legal because of the president's inherent constitutional authority, he believed the administration's public defense had fallen short.

"I don't think they've made the strongest case," said Robert F. Turner, a professor at the University of Virginia law school who was asked by the Justice Department to do news media appearances in defense of the N.S.A. program. "No one's really making the case about the constitutional issues here, and I don't think the P.R. side of this was handled very well."

Some liberals, on the other hand, said the administration's arguments had substantial force. Cass Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who has taken liberal positions on many issues, said: "The administration's legal arguments are definitely plausible. I think it's a very close case."

Mr. Bush himself said in an interview broadcast Friday by CBS News that he wrestled with the legal issues before he approved the program. "It wasn't an easy to decision to make," he said.

The president said he had to be "convinced" by administration lawyers that he had the power to order wiretaps without warrants. "I said, how come we can't use the procedures" established for getting an emergency warrant retroactively within 72 hours after it is executed, "and they said it won't work," he said.

But Mr. Bush said in the interview that he believed his power had limits even in wartime. "I don't think a president can order torture, for example. I don't think a president can order the assassination of a leader of another country with which we're not at war," he said. "There are clear red lines."

In the six weeks since the N.S.A. program was disclosed, the administration has sought to flesh out its public justifications with new details — highlighting, for instance, George Washington's interception of British mail, or giving details on how long it can take to get a wiretap warrant — but the basic thrust of its case has remained the same.

It rests on two main contentions: that the president has the inherent constitutional authority to order wiretaps without warrants in protecting national security, and that Congress gave him that authority, at least implicitly, on Sept. 14, 2001, when it authorized Mr. Bush to use "all necessary and appropriate military force" against those responsible for the attacks.

Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said he was not persuaded by the White House's assertions about the president's inherent power to protect the country. "It basically says that if national security in a time of an undefined war that has no predictable or defined end requires him to take some step, he can," Professor Tribe said.

But John R. Schmidt, a former Justice Department official in the Clinton administration who is now in private practice, said the Constitution certainly authorized spying on the enemy without a warrant.

"The president starts out with authority to carry out surveillance on a foreign power that has attacked this country," Mr. Schmidt said.

Mr. Schmidt noted that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, made up of three federal appeals court judges, addressed this issue in 2002 and said that it took for granted that the president had the inherent constitutional authority to conduct searches without warrants. "It's utterly indefensible for people to say that there is no plausible legal justification when the only judicial statement on this is a flat statement that the president has this authority," Mr. Schmidt said.

Some legal analysts say, however, that the appellate court was giving its assessment of past decisions and that all of the earlier precedents examined surveillance before the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up wiretap laws in response to Watergate-era abuses.

The administration's second argument is that that use of force resolution approved by Congress also authorized the surveillance program. In a section of the white paper making that point, the Justice Department quoted from a Harvard Law Review article last year by two former Bush administration lawyers to support its argument. The article discussed a 2004 Supreme Court decision, and the quoted sentence said that "the clear inference is that the A.U.M.F." — the authorization to use military force — "authorizes what the laws of war permit."

"That's obviously taken out of the context of a larger discussion," said Curtis A. Bradley, one of the article's authors and now a law professor at Duke. "I don't know of anything in the laws of war that contemplates this sort of surveillance," he said.

Professor Sunstein said "there is a reasonable argument that many have made" that the specific prohibition under FISA against wiretaps without warrants "is more specific and so overcomes the more general authorization to use force."

But there are two counterarguments, Professor Sunstein said. First, the force authorization, limited as it is to Al Qaeda and its allies, may be said to be the more specific law. Second, he continued, "if there's a doubt about which controls, we should construe F.I.S.A. not to apply to create a conflict with a presidential claim of inherent constitutional authority."

The crucial Supreme Court decision in this area, from 2004, is Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. It said the force authorization allowed the detention of an American citizen captured on a foreign battlefield in a conventional war notwithstanding a specific law prohibiting detentions without an act of Congress.

"That's probably their best argument," Professor Bradley said, referring to the Hamdi decision's understanding of the force resolution. "But the ability to use force includes the ability to capture the people you're using force against." As for the surveillance program, he added, "the connection between that is not as tight."

The Hamdi decision itself also drew some distinctions. "Certainly," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her opinion, "we agree that indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized."

The administration has lately relied heavily on historical precedents for spying, but many scholars found them unpersuasive or inapt.

"Before FISA," Professor Bradley said, "it may have been the case that the president had the authority to do this kind of surveillance. What the Department of Justice is trying to do is use the prior practice to support the present program when the present program is a violation of a duly enacted statute."

John C. Yoo, a former Justice Department official and an architect of the Bush administration's legal strategy, said he welcomed the administration's public defense of the surveillance program.

"If you compare it to the last big issue," said Professor Yoo, who now teaches law at the University of California at Berkeley, "which was the interrogation debate, they are not having their legal positions dictated by people who are leaking to the press. The administration is now really admirably explaining itself fully and is sticking to its guns. Neither thing happened last time."

Several law professors said that evaluation of the legality of the current program had been clouded by earlier arguments about detentions and interrogations.

"The Justice Department's plausible legal arguments have less credibility than they might because they are associated with argument that have less legal grounding," Professor Sunstein said.

Professor Tribe saw it differently. "The defense of the spying program is like the 13th chime of a clock," he said. "It underscores your doubts about everything that has gone before."

Barclay Walsh contributed reporting for this article.

    Bush Presses On in Legal Defense for Wiretapping, NYT, 28.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/politics/28legal.html?hp&ex=1138424400&en=509b817414a975a9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Defends His Goal of Spreading Democracy to the Mideast

January 27, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — The sweeping victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections threw President Bush and his aides on the defensive on Thursday, complicating the administration's policy of trying to promote democracy as an antidote to the spread of terrorism.

Reacting uneasily to the Hamas triumph, Mr. Bush said the results spoke to the failures of President Mahmoud Abbas and the "old guard" of his Fatah faction to root out corruption and mismanagement, not to any flaws in the administration's policy of advocating democracy.

"There was a peaceful process as people went to the polls, and that's positive," Mr. Bush said. "But what's also positive is that it's a wake-up call to the leadership. Obviously people were not happy with the status quo. The people are demanding honest government. The people want services."

But without criticizing the Palestinian people for choosing leaders who advocate the destruction of Israel, a tenet at the very core of Hamas's creed, he said that the United States would never tolerate such a policy. In the same fashion, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted that Palestinians want a negotiated peace settlement with Israel, according to opinion polls, but she repeated that this goal remained possible only if Hamas renounced its violent ways.

Mr. Bush joined a chorus of world leaders — including the so-called quartet of principal parties in the moribund peace process — in calling on Hamas to renounce terrorism, disarm its militias and recognize the legitimacy of Israel now that it has won the elections. But his tone was less confrontational than invitational — in effect, inviting Hamas to embrace reconciliation.

For now, Mr. Bush called on President Abbas to stay in office and steer the Palestinian government on a moderate course.

The Hamas victory was the fifth case recently of militants' winning significant gains through elections. They included the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon, a radical president in Iran, and Shiites backed by militias in Iraq.

As these elections unfolded, there has been increasing criticism in some quarters — notably among the self-described "realists" in foreign policy, many of them veterans of past Republican administrations — that President Bush has naively pushed for democracy in countries without the civil society components to support it.

"The Hamas victory is a disillusioning result showing that democracy and American interests don't always coincide," said Nikolas K. Gvosdev, a Russia expert who is editor of The National Interest, a publication that echoes with debate about this subject.

"Given the weakness of Palestinian society, people should not have been surprised that this was the outcome," Mr. Gvosdev added.

Other critics, too, including some Arab leaders, say that the United States failed to do its part to shore up Mr. Abbas by wringing more concessions from Israel and doing more to revitalize the economy in the West Bank and Gaza.

A senior State Department official said recently that the Bush administration, five years ago, inherited what he called the old model: that economic growth, the development of a middle class and the spread of education needed to come before democracy could take hold in troubled countries.

"But that's a story that we can no longer accept," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of rules prohibiting him from publicly explaining administration policy. "First of all you're not getting economic growth in a lot of places. We now understand that getting greater political openness and democracy in the Arab world is essential to our security."

The problem faced by the administration on Thursday was how to coax Hamas into the mainstream.

The West has more tools than mere diplomatic pressure to influence Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The authority, described by many as nearly bankrupt, has begun tapping its trust funds to pay daily expenses and is running a deficit that Israel calculates at more than $700 million a year.

Europe and the United States provide most of the $1 billion in foreign assistance that goes to the Palestinians. But some of this money has already been cut back in protest of the Palestinian leadership's raising salaries and welfare benefits, which make up a major part of the Palestinian economy.

American and European officials said they could not imagine outside aid continuing if there is a Hamas-led government that has not renounced violence or Hamas's commitment to destroying Israel.

Many of the reactions from Western diplomats took on dramatic tones, characterizing Hamas as now facing a trial of identity.

"What Hamas faces is not only a political but an existential dilemma," said Terje Roed-Larsen, the former United Nations envoy in the Middle East, in an interview. "They have built their identity on opposing elections and the institutions of the Palestinian Authority. Now they're the masters of the institutions they have been against."

Diplomats involved in the Middle East peace process known as the road map, the document that calls for reciprocal steps between Israelis and Palestinians toward creation of a Palestinian state, say that any immediate chances of reviving the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue are daunting if not impossible.

The immediate question before the administration is not whether negotiations can be revived but whether Israel can be encouraged to carry out more unilateral withdrawals from the West Bank.

As for dealing with Hamas, the Europeans are considered likely to see the problem differently, many diplomats say. Regarding both Hamas and Hezbollah, the Europeans have called for the West to use the template of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, when dealing with them.

In other words, they say, talking to Hamas may help coax it toward eventual partnership in a peace negotiation. The problem, many diplomats and experts say, is that no one even pretends that there are truly separate wings of Hamas. Its armed forces and its political leaders are married to each other inextricably.

    Bush Defends His Goal of Spreading Democracy to the Mideast, NYT, 27.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/politics/27diplo.html

Bush Sees No Need for Law to Approve Eavesdropping

January 27, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — President Bush declared again on Thursday that his administration's program for eavesdropping without warrants was well within existing law, and said that efforts in Congress to write legislation expressly giving him authority for such a program were unnecessary and dangerous.

"My concern has always been that in an attempt to try to pass a law on something that's already legal, we'll show the enemy what we're doing," Mr. Bush said in a wide-ranging morning news conference in the White House press briefing room. The president added that if the effort to write a new law "is likely to expose the nature of the program, I'll resist it."

Mr. Bush's 46-minute news conference, announced less than an hour and a half ahead of time, was an effort by the White House to frame the debate on an array of foreign and domestic issues only five days before his State of the Union address. The topics included the Hamas landslide in the Palestinian elections; photographs of Mr. Bush with Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican lobbyist; and the Congressional investigation into the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Bush appeared relaxed in the briefing room, which his aides say he prefers for news conferences instead of the more formal East Room. He appeared apprehensive at first, but loosened up when he saw a camera dangling precariously from a cord in the ceiling, threatening to crash down on the heads of reporters. "Are you wearing your helmets?" Mr. Bush asked.

He said he welcomed traveling for the 2006 midterm elections in November. "I've got one more off-year campaign in me as a sitting president, and I'm looking forward to it," he said. "As you know, I like to get out and tell people what's on my mind."

The eavesdropping program dominated the domestic policy questions at the news conference, which Mr. Bush used as another volley in his weeklong campaign to push back against both Democrats and Republicans who question the program's legality. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into the program are to begin next month.

"There's no doubt in my mind it is legal," Mr. Bush said.

He reiterated that the program, which intercepts international phone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States suspected by the government of having links to Al Qaeda, was crucial to national security, and declared that he had the constitutional authority in wartime to order it. He said that after the Sept. 11 attacks he had asked people like Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the director of the National Security Agency and now the principal deputy director of national intelligence, to come up with plans to protect against terrorist attacks.

"And so he came forward with this program," Mr. Bush said. "In other words, it wasn't designed in the White House; it was designed where you expect it to be designed, in the N.S.A."

Mr. Bush took issue with a questioner who asked why he felt the need to circumvent the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court warrants for wiretaps.

"Wait a minute," Mr. Bush said. "That's a — there's something — it's like saying, you know, 'You're breaking the law.' I'm not." He said that the surveillance act "was written in 1978" and that now "it's a different world."

Mr. Bush sidestepped a question on whether the eavesdropping program was part of an effort by the White House to reassert executive power.

"I would say that there has been a historical debate between the executive branch and the legislative branch as to who's got what power," he said. "And I don't view it as a contest with the legislative branch. Maybe they view it as a contest with the executive. I just don't."

    Bush Sees No Need for Law to Approve Eavesdropping, NYT, 27.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/politics/27bush.html?_r=1

Bush says ready to use veto if Congress overspends

Thu Jan 26, 2006 11:19 AM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, who has never vetoed legislation, said on Thursday he was ready to do so this year if the U.S. Congress approves too much government spending.

"I'm fully prepared to use the veto if they overspend," Bush told a news conference.

Speaking as it was announced that the U.S. budget deficit would hit $337 billion this year, Bush also said he would welcome legislation to discourage the use of "earmarks," or targeted spending that lawmakers often use for pet projects in their districts. Such measures are often added in secret to spending bills.

Bush touted a five-year bill to cut spending on social welfare and other programs by $39.7 billion. The measure was approved by the U.S. Senate but still needs final passage in the House of Representatives.

Approval by the House of that bill would show a resolve for fiscal discipline, Bush said.

    Bush says ready to use veto if Congress overspends, R, 26.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-01-26T161810Z_01_WAT004729_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-BUDGET.xml

Administration Starts Weeklong Blitz in Defense of Eavesdropping Program

January 24, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC LICHTBLAU

MANHATTAN, Kan., Jan. 23 - The White House opened a weeklong media blitz Monday in defense of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program, with Mr. Bush saying he found it "amazing" to be accused of breaking the law by ordering a secret program to intercept international calls and e-mail messages.

As Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sat beside him, Mr. Bush asked a friendly audience of students here at Kansas State University and members of the military from Fort Riley, "If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?"

Mr. Bush's remarks came hours after Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the nation's second-ranking intelligence official, laid out new operational details about the program at a speech in Washington, including the destruction of "accidental" interceptions and the security agency's line of command in approving wiretaps without warrants.

But General Hayden, who led the security agency at the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and has been Mr. Bush's point man on the eavesdropping program, refused to say in the face of often sharp questioning exactly how the agency determined that an American's phone call or e-mail message might "involve Al Qaeda" before eavesdropping on it.

"Clearly not every lead pans out from this or any other source," the general said, "but this program has given us information that we would not otherwise have been able to get. It's impossible for me to talk about this any more in a public way without alerting our enemies to our tactics or what we have learned. I can't give details without increasing the danger to Americans. On one level, believe me, I wish that I could. But I can't."

General Hayden's presentation, at an hourlong speech and question-and-answer session at the National Press Club that drew a few heated hecklers, was remarkable in that it featured a former director of the supersecret National Security Agency discussing what administration officials say is probably the government's most classified program.

Taken together, Mr. Bush's speech in Kansas - part of the Landon Lecture Series that President Richard M. Nixon used 36 years ago to defend his policies in Vietnam - and General Hayden's comments were part of a vigorous White House effort to turn the issue to Mr. Bush's advantage.

Among other appearances this week, Dan Bartlett, the communications director, did a round of television interviews Monday morning in defense of the program, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will give a speech on Tuesday on its legal justifications and Mr. Bush is scheduled to visit the security agency in Fort Meade, Md., on Wednesday to discuss the program.

Democrats and some Republicans have attacked the program as illegal and unconstitutional, and an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has strongly questioned its legal underpinnings and the limited briefings that Congressional leaders were given about it. Leading Democrats said Monday that they found the White House's latest line of defense to be unpersuasive, with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, saying that Mr. Bush's speech reflected a refusal to "come clean" with the public.

"I am eager for the Bush administration to level with the American people and participate fully and openly in upcoming Congressional hearings," scheduled for Feb. 6 in the Senate, Mr. Reid said. "We can be strong and operate under the rule of law."

But the White House, framing the controversy from the perspective of the country's will to fight terrorism, sought on Monday to recast the very language surrounding the debate.

Mr. Bush, for the first time, called his decision to authorize the interceptions part of a "terrorist surveillance program," a phrase meant to convey that only members of Al Qaeda and their associates were falling into the net of the security agency. General Hayden took issue with many reports in the news media that have referred to a "domestic spying" program. Saying that the program is not really domestic in nature, he emphasized that it was limited to calls and e-mail in which one end of the communication was outside the United States and which "we have a reasonable basis to believe involve Al Qaeda or one of its affiliates."

At the same time, General Hayden acknowledged that some purely domestic communications might be accidentally intercepted. The New York Times reported last month that this appeared to have happened in a small number of cases because of the difficulties posed by globalized communications in determining whether a phone call or e-mail message was truly "international."

"If there were ever an anomaly, and we discovered that there had been an inadvertent intercept of a domestic-to-domestic call, that intercept would be destroyed and not reported," General Hayden said.

He also acknowledged that, in a broadening of security agency operations after Sept. 11 that he said was separate from the eavesdropping program, the agency began sending the Federal Bureau of Investigation large volumes of leads from its operations. The agency "turned on the spigot of N.S.A. reporting to F.B.I. in, frankly, an unprecedented way," he said.

Some current and former F.B.I. officials have said that the torrent of security agency terrorism information almost always led to dead ends and may have hindered antiterrorism efforts by distracting agents from other assignments.

General Hayden said that after starting to send the large volumes of leads after Sept. 11, "we found that we were giving them too much data in too raw form" and quickly made adjustments to the system. But he defended the value of the operation, saying that "it's the nature of intelligence that many tips lead nowhere, but you have to go down some blind alleys to find the tips that pay off."

Mr. Bush, meanwhile, appeared to expand his argument about the legal justification for his decision to avoid the 1978 law that governs domestic surveillance, saying that it was not only part of his constitutional authority, but that the Supreme Court had also backed up his authority.

"Federal courts have consistently ruled that a president has authority under the Constitution to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance against our enemies," Mr. Bush said, making no reference to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, which sets out the "exclusive" rules for obtaining warrants from a court that operates in secret.

"Predecessors of mine have used that same constitutional authority," he said.

Mr. Bush cited a recent Supreme Court decision, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, to bolster his argument that bypassing the courts fell within presidential power during the struggle against terrorism.

In that case, the administration argued that a resolution passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, authorizing the use of force in tracking down those responsible, gave the president the right to hold American citizens indefinitely without trial as enemy combatants. It never dealt with domestic spying, and the court rejected the administration's argument on enemy combatants.

But Mr. Bush said on Monday that in its ruling, the court had recognized that the resolution gave the president "additional authority."

In front of the students and members of the Army, he described his interpretation of that authority.

"I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you what it means," he said. "It means Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics. It said, 'Mr. President, you've got the power to protect us, but we're not going to tell you how.' "

David E. Sanger reported from Manhattan, Kan., for this article,and Eric Lichtblau from Washington.

    Administration Starts Weeklong Blitz in Defense of Eavesdropping Program, NYT, 24.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/politics/24nsa.html?_r=1

Bush to anti-abortion activists: 'We will prevail'

Mon Jan 23, 2006 5:45 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday told opponents of abortion their views would eventually prevail and urged them to work to convince more Americans of "the rightness of our cause."

On the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established federal abortion rights, Bush addressed activists by telephone from Manhattan, Kansas, and called their goals noble.

"We, of course, seek common ground where possible," he said. "We're working to persuade more of our fellow Americans of the rightness of our cause, and this is a cause that appeals to the conscience of our citizens and is rooted in America's deepest principles -- history tells us that with such a cause, we will prevail."

The rally was held to protest the 1973 decision, which opponents hope to overturn someday, especially now that Bush has named two justices to the Supreme Court -- John Roberts, who replaced the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Samuel Alito to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

O'Connor has often been the swing vote on abortion and other social issues on the nine-member court.

Alito, whose confirmation by the Senate is expected soon, gave no clear statement on whether he would vote to overturn Roe if it came before the court, although he opposed abortion in a memo he wrote as a Reagan administration attorney two decades ago.

During his confirmation hearings, Alito reaffirmed his vow to respect legal precedent and noted the 1973 decision had been upheld repeatedly.

"You believe as I do that every human life has value, that the strong have a duty to protect the weak and that the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence apply to everyone, not just to those considered healthy or wanted or convenient," Bush told the anti-abortion marchers.

As anti-abortion activists gathered in Washington and elsewhere across the country, Bush headed for Kansas where he spoke about the war on terrorism. As he has in past years, the president phoned in his support rather than attend in person.

    Bush to anti-abortion activists: 'We will prevail', R, 23.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-01-23T224548Z_01_N23382882_RTRUKOC_0_US-ABORTION-BUSH.xml

Bush rejects charges that domestic spying illegal

Mon Jan 23, 2006 9:07 PM ET
Reuters
By Steve Holland

MANHATTAN, Kansas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush rejected charges his domestic eavesdropping program was illegal on Monday, while other administration officials said the war on terrorism had made the federal law on electronic surveillance outdated.

Bush appeared on stage at Kansas State University as part of a White House public relations campaign to defend a National Security Agency spying program that has raised an outcry among Democrats and Republicans who say Bush may have overstepped his authority.

"You know, it's amazing that people say to me, 'Well, he was just breaking the law.' If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?" Bush said.

The NSA program, exposed last month by the New York Times, was authorized by Bush to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of U.S. citizens without first obtaining warrants as a means of aiding in the hunt for al Qaeda suspects in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

Critics say the program violates both the U.S. Constitution and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without the approval of a special secret court.

Democrats have also criticized Bush for notifying only eight top lawmakers in Congress about the surveillance program, rather than the full intelligence oversight committees of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Bush appeared in Kansas alongside Sen. Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who so far has resisted Democratic calls to investigate the eavesdropping program.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the program for February 6 at which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will testify.

POLITICAL IMPACT

The administration is mounting a push this week, including speeches by senior officials and a visit by Bush to the NSA headquarters, to counter criticism of the program on legal grounds and portray it as a vital tool against terrorism.

Political analysts have said Republicans may try to use the issue against Democrats in congressional elections later this year to suggest they are weak on security.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada responded that it was possible to be strong and operate within the law. "We will stop at nothing to hunt down and defeat the terrorists and we will do that by holding firm to our deepest values of democracy and liberty," he said in a statement.

While Bush made his comments in Kansas, other administration officials said the surveillance program was necessary because the 28-year-old FISA law is not as effective against terrorism.

"I don't think that anyone can make the claim that the FISA statute is optimized to deal or prevent a 9/11 or deal with a lethal enemy who likely already had combatants inside the United States," said Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who was NSA director when Bush authorized the domestic spying program.

"(For) this particular aspect, this particular challenge -- detect and prevent attacks -- what we're doing now is operationally more relevant, operationally more effective."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that FISA was created in "a different time period" and did not anticipate technological advances that have occurred in telecommunications in recent decades.

Hayden, who is now principal deputy to U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte, also stressed that the program dealt strictly with international communications, not those between people inside the United States, and was directed at people he said were associated with al Qaeda.

"This isn't a drift-net out there where we're soaking up everyone's communications," Hayden said.

"This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with al Qaeda," he said in remarks delivered at the National Press Club in Washington.

The White House's stepped-up effort to defend the program followed an audio tape last week from Osama bin Laden in which the al Qaeda leader threatened new attacks in the United States, a prospect that has heightened security concerns.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan in Washington)

    Bush rejects charges that domestic spying illegal, R, 24.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-01-24T020653Z_01_N22234484_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-EAVESDROPPING.xml

 

Steve Sack        Minnesota, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune        Cagle        20.1.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/sack.asp

White House Strikes Back on 'Plantation' Remark

January 18, 2006
The New York Times
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - The White House said on Tuesday that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was "out of bounds" when she compared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation and harshly criticized the Bush administration.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking at a ceremony in Harlem honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, said that Republicans had run the House "like a plantation" in which dissent or ideas from the minority party were not tolerated.

Republicans responded within hours, accusing her of trying to score political points with divisive and racially charged language. But several prominent black leaders quickly came to her defense, saying they agreed with her.

On Tuesday, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, expressed dismay when asked about Mrs. Clinton's characterization of the Republican-led House, as well as about another comment she made at the ceremony, that the Bush administration "will go down in history as one of the worst" to run the nation.

"I think they were way out of line," Mr. McClellan said of Mrs. Clinton's comments.

But Mrs. Clinton's advisers fired back at the White House. "What's out of line is a White House that defends Tom DeLay's innocence and the corruption in the Republican House of Representatives," said Howard Wolfson, a Clinton spokesman.

Senator Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, was also critical on Tuesday of Mrs. Clinton's speech and style.

During an interview with Chris Matthews for Tuesday night's "Hardball" program on MSNBC, Mr. Lott said of the New York senator: "When she speaks to the Senate, she uses very moderate terms and very low modulation and is very good. When she goes to events like this one and starts hollering and using this sort of, just vicious kind of language, I think it really is a ... you know, you wind up having to apologize for it."

    White House Strikes Back on 'Plantation' Remark, NYT, 18.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/politics/18plantation.html

Bruce Plante        Chattanooga, TN, Chattanooga Times Free Press        Cagle        18.1.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/plante.asp

Glum Democrats Can't See Halting Bush on Courts

January 15, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY, RICHARD W. STEVENSON and NEIL A. LEWIS

This article was reported by Adam Nagourney, Richard W. Stevenson and Neil A. Lewis and written by Mr. Nagourney.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - Disheartened by the administration's success with the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., Democratic leaders say that President Bush is putting an enduring conservative ideological imprint on the nation's judiciary, and that they see little hope of holding off the tide without winning back control of the Senate or the White House.

In interviews, Democrats said the lesson of the Alito hearings was that this White House could put on the bench almost any qualified candidate, even one whom Democrats consider to be ideologically out of step with the country.

That conclusion amounts to a repudiation of a central part of a strategy Senate Democrats settled on years ago in a private retreat where they discussed how to fight a Bush White House effort to recast the judiciary: to argue against otherwise qualified candidates by saying they would take the courts too far to the right.

Even though Democrats thought from the beginning that they had little hope of defeating the nomination, they were dismayed that a nominee with such clear conservative views - in particular a written record of opposition to abortion rights - appeared to be stirring little opposition.

Republicans say that Mr. Bush, in making conservative judicial choices, has been doing precisely what he said he would do in both of his presidential campaigns. Indeed, they say, his re-election, and the election of a Republican Congress, meant that the choices reflected the views of much of the American public.

Republicans rejected Democratic assertions that Judge Alito was out of the mainstream. "The American people see Judge Alito and say, that's exactly the sort of person we want to see on the Supreme Court," said Steve Schmidt, the White House official who managed the nomination.

Now,, several Democrats said, even at a time when many of his other initiatives seem in doubt, and though he was forced by conservatives to withdraw his first choice for the seat, Mr. Bush appears on the verge of achieving what he had set as a primary goal of his presidency: a fundamental reshaping of the federal judiciary along more conservative lines.

Mr. Bush has now appointed one-quarter of the federal appeals court judges, and, assuming that Judge Alito is confirmed - the Judiciary Committee vote is expected to occur in the next 10 days - will have put two self-described conservatives on a Supreme Court that has only two members appointed by a Democratic president.

"They have made a lot of progress," said Ronald A. Klain, a former Democratic chief counsel for the Judiciary Committee and the White House counsel in charge of judicial nominations for President Bill Clinton. "I hate to say they're done because Lord only knows what's next. They have achieved a large part of their objective."

Asked if he had any hope that Democrats could slow President Bush's effort to push the court to the right, Mr. Klain responded: "No. The only thing that will fix this is a Democratic president and more vacancies. It takes a long time to make these kinds of changes and it's going to take a long time to undo them."

Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said it was now hard to imagine a legislative strategy that could slow Mr. Bush's judicial campaign, assuming vacancies continue to emerge, at least through the end of this year.

"You either need a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate or moderate Republicans who will break ranks when it's a conservative nominee," Mr. Schumer said. "We don't have any of those three. The only tool we have is the filibuster, which is a very difficult tool to use, and with only 45 Democrats, it's harder than it was last term."

Few Democrats or analysts said they thought that Judge Alito's nomination could ever be blocked, noting that as a rule presidents tend to get their Supreme Court nominees approved by the Senate.

"It may be a mistake to think that their failure demonstrates that they necessarily did something wrong," said Richard H. Fallon, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School. Referring to one of the major Democratic complaints about Judge Alito's testimony, Mr. Fallon said: "As long as most of the public will settle for evasive or uninformative answers, maybe there was nothing that they could have done to get Alito to make a major error."

Nonetheless, there have been some recriminations in the party since the hearings ended about how Democrats responded to a nominee who once seemed an easier target than Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., because of his long record of written opinions and briefs.

Several Democrats expressed frustration over what they saw as the Republicans outmaneuvering them by drawing attention to an episode Wednesday when Judge Alito's wife, Martha-Ann, began crying as her husband was being questioned. That evening, senior Democratic senate aides convened at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, stunned at the realization that the pictures of a weeping Mrs. Alito were being broadcast across the nation - as opposed to, for example, images of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, pressing Judge Alito about his membership in an alumni club that resisted affirmative action efforts.

"Had she not cried, we would have won that day," said one Senate strategist involved in the hearings, who did not want to be quoted by name discussing the Democrats' problems. "It got front-page attention. It was on every local news show."

Beyond that, Democrats said Judge Alito had turned out to be a more skillful witness than they had expected. They said Democrats on the Judiciary Committee had been outflanked in their efforts to pin down Judge Alito on any issues, and that some of the questioners - notably Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware - devoted more time to talking than to pressing the nominee for answers.

"You're trying to convince the American people that this man is not on your side," said Dale Bumpers, a former Democratic senator from Arkansas. "Obviously, we didn't do a very good job. Or I'd put it this way: Alito and Roberts did a good enough job that the Democrats couldn't make that case."

Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, said: "It is causing far more serious consideration by at least the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee of what you do in future cases. How do you make clear where this person stands? Alito was pretty successful at getting through this maze."

The developments were particularly frustrating, Democrats said, because Mr. Bush has never made a secret of what he wanted to do with the judiciary, and Democrats had devoted much energy to trying to stop it.

The Democratic push began in earnest on the last weekend of April 2001, when 42 of the 50 Democratic senators attended a retreat in Farmington, Pa., to hear from experts and discuss ways they could fight a Bush effort to remake the judiciary.

"There were very few principles on which we could all agree," said Mr. Daschle, who was Senate minority leader at the time of the meeting. "But one was that we anticipated that the administration would test the envelope. They were going to go as far as the envelope would allow in appointing conservative judges."

At the retreat, Democrats listened to a panel composed of Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Cass R. Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School and Marcia D. Greenberger, the co-president of the National Women's Law Center. The panelists told them that the court was at a historic juncture and that the Bush White House was prepared to fill the courts with conservatives who deserved particularly strong scrutiny, participants said.

The panel also advised them, participants said, that Democratic senators could oppose even nominees with strong credentials on the grounds that the White House was trying to push the courts in a conservative direction, a strategy that now seems to have failed the party.

Mr. Tribe said Friday that Democrats were increasingly discouraged in their efforts to mount opposition campaigns. "When it comes down to it, the numbers of Democrats means that it begins to feel to some like tilting at windmills," he said.

Members of the committee, while defending their performance, said they had been hampered because many of the issues they needed to deal with - like theories of executive power - were arcane and did not lend themselves to building a public case against Judge Alito.

Mr. Kennedy said that the nomination process, and particularly the hearings, had "turned into a political campaign," and that the White House had proved increasingly skilled in turning that to its advantage.

"These issues are so sophisticated - half the Senate didn't know what the unitary presidency was, let alone the people of Boston," he said, referring to one of the legal theories that was a focus of the hearings. "I'm sure we could have done better."

"But what has happened is that this has turned into a political campaign," he said. "The whole process has become so politicized that I think the American people walk away more confused about the way these people stand."

Democratic aides said there had been even less strategy than usual in trying to coordinate the questioning by the eight Democratic senators. The situation was complicated because senators and staff were out of Washington before the hearing.

But while there was some self-criticism among Democrats, the main concern coming out of the hearings was that the nation had reached a turning point in the ideological composition of its judicial system.

By the end of last year, about 60 percent of the 165 judges on the federal appeals courts were appointed by Republican presidents, with 40 percent from Democratic presidents. Of the 13 circuit courts of appeal, 9 have majorities of judges named by Republicans presidents.

The extent to which Republicans are intent on remaking the judiciary was demonstrated by one of President Bush's greatest setbacks, when he was forced to abandon the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers, in no small part because conservatives were distrustful of her position on abortion rights.

Asked how they might stop the shift, Stephanie Cutter, a senior Democratic Senate aide, sighed and responded: "Win. Win in 2006."

Indeed, many Democrats said that what took place with both the Roberts and Alito nominations simply underlined what Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democratic who ran for president in 2004, said would happen to the court if Mr. Bush was returned to the White House.

"George Bush won the election," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat. "If you don't like it, you better win elections."

Neil A. Lewis contributed reporting for this article.

    Glum Democrats Can't See Halting Bush on Courts, NYT, 15.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/politics/politicsspecial1/15alito.html?hp&ex=1137387600&en=7bba39959727f2a3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

US asks top court to dismiss Guantanamo case

Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:13 PM ET
Reuters
By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to dismiss a challenge to President George W. Bush's power to create military tribunals to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes.

The administration's argument was based on a law signed by Bush on December 30 that limits the ability of Guantanamo prisoners caught in the president's war on terrorism to challenge their detentions in federal courts.

Administration lawyers said the new law applied to the Supreme Court case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni accused of being Osama bin Laden's bodyguard and driver.

He had challenged the military tribunals before his actual trial, but administration lawyers said that under the new law he could bring a court appeal only after the commission proceedings against him had been completed.

The Hamdan case is considered an important test of the administration's policy in the war on terrorism. The tribunals, formally called military commissions, were authorized by Bush after the September 11 attacks and have been criticized by human rights groups as being fundamentally unfair.

There are about 500 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Charges have been brought against nine people, including Hamdan. Pretrial hearings were held in two cases this week.

The administration cited the same new law in moving last week to dismiss more than 180 cases in U.S. district court in Washington involving Guantanamo inmates who have challenged their detention.

The legislation signed by Bush on December 30 bans cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The anti-torture law also curbs the ability of prisoners being held at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba to challenge their detention in federal court.

HAMDAN LAWYERS SAY CASE CAN GO AHEAD

One of Hamdan's attorneys, Neal Katyal, had no immediate comment on the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the case.

Hamdan's lawyers previously told the high court the new law did not prevent the justices from considering the merits of his claims.

They also filed a request for habeas corpus relief directly with the Supreme Court in a bid to get around the jurisdictional problems and make sure the case can go forward.

It was not known when the court would decide whether to dismiss the case.

Justice Department lawyers told the Supreme Court that Hamdan's appeal should be dismissed without reaching the merits of the issue because of a lack of jurisdiction.

"Under well-settled principles, Congress's decision to remove jurisdiction over this action and others must be given immediate effect," Solicitor General Paul Clement said in 23-page motion filed with the Supreme Court.

"By establishing an exclusive review procedure for military commission challenges, Congress has made plain its judgment that judicial review of military commission proceedings should occur only after those proceedings have been completed," he said.

Department lawyers said Hamdan under the new law may seek review in the U.S. appeals court in Washington of any final decision rendered against him by a military commission.

(Additional reporting by Deborah Charles)

    US asks top court to dismiss Guantanamo case, R, 12.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-01-13T031312Z_01_DIT275081_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-COURT.xml

Legal Context

A Quick Focus on the Powers of a President

January 10, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 - The opinion is more than 50 years old, and it is not even binding precedent. But just minutes into the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., it took center stage and seemed to lay the groundwork for the questions he will face concerning his views on the limits of presidential power.

The 1952 opinion, a concurrence by Justice Robert H. Jackson, rejected President Harry S. Truman's assertion that he had the constitutional power to seize the nation's steel mills to aid the war effort in Korea. Whether and how Justice Jackson's analysis should apply to broadly similar recent assertions by the Bush administration, notably concerning its domestic surveillance program, will plainly be a central theme when questioning of Judge Alito begins Tuesday morning.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, discussed only three decisions by name in his opening statement: Justice Jackson's concurrence in the 1952 case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, and two abortion cases, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Quoting from the Jackson concurrence and referring to the surveillance program, Mr. Specter said, "What is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system."

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the committee, made a similar assertion in noting that Judge Alito would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor if he was confirmed. "She upheld," Mr. Leahy said, "the fundamental principle of judicial review over the exercise of government power."

That was a reference to Justice O'Connor's decisive opinion turning back another broad assertion of executive power in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a 2004 case in which the court allowed a man held without charges as an enemy combatant to challenge his detention, over the objections of the Bush administration.

"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens," Justice O'Connor wrote for herself and three other justices in 2004. She cited one case as precedent for that proposition: Youngstown.

Judge Alito, in his brief, mostly biographical opening statement, did not address Youngstown or any other case. But he did seem to nod in the direction of the current controversy. "No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law," he said, "and no person in this country is beneath the law."

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., at his confirmation hearings in September, endorsed Justice Jackson's concurrence. It has, Judge Roberts said, "set the framework for consideration of questions of executive power in times of war and with respect to foreign affairs since it was decided."

Most of the discussion of executive power on Monday came from Democratic senators. One Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, argued for an aggressive view of executive power.

"In a time of war," Mr. Graham said, "I want the executive branch to have the tools to protect me, my family and my country."

In 1952, the Supreme Court faced a set of clashing interests in the Youngstown case broadly similar to those in the current surveillance controversy. That April, President Truman seized the nation's steel mills to prevent an expected labor strike, saying that national security during the Korean War required uninterrupted access to steel.

In June 1952, in a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court rejected the various legal rationales offered by the Truman administration for the seizures. Many of those rationales have echoes in the justifications offered by the Bush administration for its detention of enemy combatants, harsh interrogations and domestic surveillance without court approval.

Writing for the court, Justice Hugo L. Black said the president's power was extensive but not unlimited.

"Even though 'theater of war' be an expanding concept," Justice Black wrote, "we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the commander in chief of the armed forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the nation's lawmakers, not for its military authorities."

There are, of course, obvious differences between the Youngstown case and recent efforts to combat terrorism. The seizure of the steel mills, for instance, was a wholly domestic matter. The surveillance program, by contrast, monitors international communications between the United States and other nations. The Korean War was, moreover, a conventional one, while terrorism involves a more amorphous threat.

It is not entirely clear why Justice Jackson's concurrence has had such a lasting impact. It may be because he spoke with particular authority, having argued for expansive executive power as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's attorney general, much as Judge Alito did when he was a lawyer in the Reagan administration.

"That comprehensive and undefined presidential powers hold both practical advantages and grave dangers for the country," Justice Jackson wrote in the concurrence, "will impress anyone who has served as legal adviser to a president in time of transition and public anxiety."

He proposed three categories to judge the constitutionality of assertions of executive power. His framework may be thought to endorse or reject the Bush administration's position, depending on how various Congressional actions are understood.

The president's authority is at its maximum, Justice Jackson wrote, when he "acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress." The administration says a resolution authorizing the president to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks was such authorization.

In his opening statement, Mr. Graham said he was troubled by that argument. "I've got some problems," he said, "with using a force resolution to the point that future presidents may not be able to get a force resolution from Congress if you interpret it too broadly."

Justice Jackson's second category was "a zone of twilight" in which Congress has taken no action. In that case, he said, "any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law."

The third category is where the president takes action at odds with the will of Congress. A 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, appears to require court approval before monitoring of the sort the administration has acknowledged.

In this third area, Justice Jackson said, the president's power is "at its lowest ebb," and claims of presidential authority "must be scrutinized with caution."

    A Quick Focus on the Powers of a President, NYT, 10.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/politics/politicsspecial1/10legal.html?ei=5094&en=69a2d0c1883c19c1&hp=&ex=1136869200&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1136869794-hox4V6v38F/Z8+/09VdnlQ

Bush Renews Patriot Act Campaign

January 4, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - President Bush assembled a phalanx of United States attorneys at the White House on Tuesday to bolster his call for Congress to renew the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, intensifying a coming clash with Capitol Hill over civil liberties and national security.

Surrounded in the Roosevelt Room by 19 federal prosecutors, Mr. Bush said Congress was holding up renewal of the law because of politics.

"When it came time to renew the act, for partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up and have agreed that it's still necessary to protect the country," Mr. Bush said. "The enemy has not gone away - they're still there. And I expect Congress to understand that we're still at war and they've got to give us the tools necessary to win this war."

The president's remarks and an appearance by the United States attorneys in the West Wing driveway afterward were part of a stepped-up White House campaign to make permanent the antiterrorism law, which expanded the government's investigative powers after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The measure was originally passed with bipartisan support, but with time limits built in because many lawmakers were nervous about its broad reach in the wake of criticism that the legislation impinged on civil liberties. Last month, with major provisions of the law set to expire on Dec. 31, the White House made a strong push to make the law permanent, but Democrats and a handful of Republicans balked, and extended the law for only five weeks, to Feb. 3.

The White House efforts were further complicated by a simultaneous uproar in Congress last month over revelations that Mr. Bush authorized a secret spying program to monitor international phone calls and international e-mail messages of people in the United States.

The United States attorneys, all Bush appointees summoned to Washington by the Justice Department, echoed Mr. Bush when they appeared en masse in front of television cameras moments later.

Rosalynn Mauskopf, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, was among those who stepped up to the microphones and said the law had made it easier for the Eastern District "to choke off the supply of money to terrorists."

Specifically, Ms. Mauskopf said prosecutors had used the law, which broadens federal powers to demand financial records, to convict the spiritual adviser to Osama bin Laden, Sheik Muhammad Ali Hassan al-Mouyad, as well as Sheik Mouyad's assistant, for funneling millions of dollars to Al Qaeda and the militant group Hamas.

Administration and Congressional officials said they expected a compromise on the renewal bill in coming weeks between the White House and members of both parties. In mid-December, the House did pass a measure to make 14 of 16 expiring provisions in the act permanent, but that bill became bottled up in the Senate, eventually leading Congress to enact only a five-week extension.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who said he voted to block permanent renewal of the act in part because of the revelations about the spying program, said Tuesday that there was room for a deal.

"Look," Mr. Schumer said, "this is one that should be able to be worked out because the sides are relatively close."

One main sticking point is a provision that gives the federal government the power to demand access to library records on what patrons have borrowed and other information material showing their reading habits. The provision was challenged in a lawsuit in Connecticut by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The other main sticking point is an administrative subpoena, called a national security letter, that gives the federal government the power to demand records without a judge's approval.

Among the other United States attorneys called to the White House on Tuesday were Mike Garcia of the Southern District of New York, Carol Lam of the Southern District of California and Paul McNulty of the Eastern District of Virginia, who is also acting deputy attorney general.

    Bush Renews Patriot Act Campaign, NYT, 4.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/politics/04bush.html

U.S. to Seek Dismissal of Guantánamo Suits

January 4, 2006
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - The Bush administration notified federal trial judges in Washington that it would soon ask them to dismiss all lawsuits brought by prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, challenging their detentions, Justice Department officials said Tuesday.

The action means that the administration is moving swiftly to take advantage of an amendment to the military bill that President Bush signed into law last Friday. The amendment strips federal courts from hearing habeas corpus petitions from Guantánamo detainees.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department sent notices to all the federal judges in Washington who have cases involving challenges brought by Guantánamo inmates, informing them of the new amendment. The officials said the department would file formal notices within several days asking the judges to dismiss more than 160 cases involving at least 300 detainees.

If the administration wins its argument it would mean an abrupt end to a wide effort by dozens of lawyers to use the right of habeas corpus in federal courts to challenge the imprisonment of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo as enemy combatants.

The administration had selected Guantánamo as the site for a detention camp for terrorism suspects in the expectation that its actions would not be subject to review by federal courts. But in June 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the naval base at Guantánamo was not outside the jurisdiction of United States law and that the habeas corpus statute that allows prisoners to challenge their detentions was applicable.

The challenges were brought in various district courts in Washington. After some federal judges disagreed over the meaning of the Supreme Court ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit took up the issue, and during arguments in September, the appeals judges seemed skeptical of the administration's contentions.

In addition to arguing in court, the administration separately pressed its case in Congress and found a strong ally in Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who said the challenges brought by Guantánamo inmates were frivolous and were clogging the courts. Mr. Graham, along with Senators Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, sponsored the amendment to the Defense Act eliminating habeas corpus jurisdiction in federal courts.

The amendment instead allows the District of Columbia appellate court to review the results of military tribunals at Guantánamo in which the prisoners were found to have been properly deemed imprisoned as enemy combatants.

Administration critics have complained that the tribunals at Guantánamo, in which panels of three officers decide whether a prisoner is an enemy combatant, are unfair in several respects. The prisoners are not represented by lawyers and they often may not see evidence used against them for national security reasons.

Tasia Scolinos, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said the detainees had ample opportunity to be heard.

"We are aware of no other country that has provided their enemies with such extensive legal review during an ongoing conflict," Ms. Scolinos said. "Detainees are entitled to legal review both within the military system and to the highest civilian courts in the country."

The Justice Department requests asking the district judges to dismiss all the habeas corpus petitions are expected to be challenged by lawyers for the detainees, making it likely that the issue will be resolved by the appeals court or the Supreme Court.

Although the courts and Congress are co-equal branches of government, the Constitution allows Congress to define the scope of jurisdiction for all federal courts below the Supreme Court.

    U.S. to Seek Dismissal of Guantánamo Suits, NYT, 4.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/politics/04gitmo.html

Bush Defends Spy Program and Denies Misleading Public

January 2, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - President Bush continued on Sunday to defend both the legality and the necessity of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, and he denied that he misled the public last year when he insisted that any government wiretap required a court order.

"I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy's thinking, and that's what we're doing," Mr. Bush told reporters in San Antonio as he visited wounded soldiers at the Brooke Army Medical Center.

"They attacked us before, they'll attack us again if they can," he said. "And we're going to do everything we can to stop them."

Mr. Bush's strong defense of the N.S.A. program, which he authorized in 2002 to allow some domestic eavesdropping without court warrants, came as a leading Democratic lawmaker called on the administration to make available current and former high-level officials to explain the evolution of the secret program.

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has already pledged to make hearings into the program one of his highest priorities.

In a letter to Mr. Specter on Sunday, Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who is also on the committee, said the panel should also explore "significant concern about the legality of the program even at the very highest levels of the Department of Justice."

The New York Times reported Sunday that James B. Comey, then deputy attorney general, refused to sign on to the recertification of the program in March 2004.

That prompted two of Mr. Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel and now the attorney general - to make an emergency hospital visit to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to try to persuade him to give his authorization, as required by White House procedures for the program.

Officials with knowledge of the events said that Mr. Ashcroft also appeared reluctant to sign on to the continued use of the program, and that the Justice Department's concerns appear to have led in part to the suspension of the program for several months. After a secret audit, new protocols were put in place at the N.S.A. to better determine how the agency established the targets of its eavesdropping operations, officials have said.

Asked Sunday about internal opposition, President Bush said: "This program has been reviewed, constantly reviewed, by people throughout my administration. And it still is reviewed.

"Not only has it been reviewed by Justice Department officials, it's been reviewed by members of the United States Congress," he said. "It's a vital, necessary program."

But Mr. Schumer, in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," said the White House should have to explain the apparent internal dissent over the program.

"I hope the White House won't hide behind saying 'executive privilege, we can't discuss this,' " Mr. Schumer said. "That's the wrong attitude."

"A discussion, perhaps a change in the law," he said, "those are all legitimate. Unilaterally changing the law because the vice president or president thinks it's wrong, without discussing the change, that's not the American way."

But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said on the same television program that Mr. Bush had acted within the Constitution to protect the country from another terrorist attack. Mr. McConnell said the focus now should be on identifying who disclosed the existence of the classified operation.

The Justice Department said Friday that it had opened an investigation into the disclosure of the N.S.A. program, which was first reported by The Times on Dec. 15.

Mr. McConnell said of the disclosure, "This needs to be investigated, because whoever leaked this information has done the U.S. and its national security a great disservice."

As Mr. Bush continued to defend the program in San Antonio, he was asked about a remark he made in Buffalo in 2004 at an appearance in support of the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, where he discussed government wiretaps.

"Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap," Mr. Bush said in Buffalo, "a wiretap requires a court order."

He added: "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

Democrats have seized on the remark, made more than two years after Mr. Bush authorized the N.S.A. to conduct wiretaps without warrants, in charging that the president had misled the public.

Asked about that charge on Sunday, Mr. Bush said: "I was talking about roving wiretaps, I believe, involved in the Patriot Act. This is different from the N.S.A. program.

"The N.S.A. program is a necessary program. I was elected to protect the American people from harm. And on Sept. 11, 2001, our nation was attacked. And after that day, I vowed to use all the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people, which is what I have been doing and will continue to do."

Mr. Bush also emphasized that the program was "limited" in nature and designed to intercept communications from known associates of Al Qaeda to the United States. He said several times that the eavesdropping was "limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States."

This assertion was at odds with press accounts and public statements of his senior aides, who have said the authorization for the program required one end of a communication - either incoming or outgoing - to be outside the United States. The White House, clarifying the president's remarks after his appearance, said later that either end of the communication could in fact be outside the United States.

The Times has reported that despite a prohibition on eavesdropping on phone calls or e-mail messages that are regarded as purely domestic, the N.S.A. has accidentally intercepted what are thought to be a small number of communications in which each end was on American soil, due to technical confusion over what constitutes an "international" call.

Officials also say that the N.S.A., beyond eavesdropping on up to 500 phone numbers and e-mail addresses at any one time, has conducted much larger data-mining operations on vast volumes of communication within the United States to identify possible terror suspects. To accomplish this, the agency has reached agreements with major American telecommunications companies to gain access to some of the country's biggest "switches" carrying phone and e-mail traffic into and out of the country.

    Bush Defends Spy Program and Denies Misleading Public, NYT, 2.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/02/politics/02spy.html

The Bush Legacy

2006 Is So Yesterday

January 1, 2006
By DAVID E. SANGER
CRAWFORD, Tex.

BEFORE he retreated behind the fences of his ranch here to ring out a bruising year, President Bush made it clear that even with three years to go, he already regards his presidency as a big one in the sweep of American history.

He insists that his real motive in conducting the war in Iraq is to democratize one of the least democratic corners of the earth. He regularly quotes Harry Truman, who rebuilt Japan and Germany while remaking American national security policy from the ground up. Several of his speeches have deliberately included Churchillian echoes about never surrendering to terrorists and achieving total victory, along with made-for-television imagery to drive home the message.

Mr. Bush, of course, is trying to give larger meaning to a war whose unpopularity dragged down his presidency last year. But at moments he often seems to also be talking directly to historians, tilting the pinball machine of presidential legacy. It may not be too early: the year 2006, many in the White House believe, will cement the story line of the Bush presidency for the ages. And there is growing acknowledgment, perhaps premature, that his standing will rise or fall with the fate of Iraq.

Maybe so, but presidential legacies are complicated - a point proven by Truman himself, whose reputation has aged so well that it is almost forgotten that he left office mired in the intelligence failures, early mistakes and the ultimate muddle of the Korean War.

"They have learned to love the Truman analogies in this White House because it's a reminder that legacies are built out of events that happen long after most presidents leave office, when we see things through the lens of later events and one or two ideas look like big turning points," said Richard Norton Smith, who heads the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Ill. Only in retrospect do we regard Truman's decision to integrate the armed forces as a precursor to the civil rights movement, something he did while containing Stalin and establishing NATO.

These days, you can almost hear this administration struggling to find its own combination of domestic and foreign programs - Supreme Court appointments and education initiatives, tinkering with domestic liberties in the name of facing down foreign enemies - that makes the difference between an F.D.R. and a Franklin Pierce.

What if Iraq in a few years is a muddle of its own, neither a great democratic success nor the battleground of a sectarian civil war? Or if it takes decades to sort out? The history of American interventions is littered with such examples. In the Philippines, victory in 1898 was followed by more than a decade of insurgency, and democracy did not begin to take full root for nearly a century.

And is fighting Islamic radicalism really akin to fighting fascism and communism, as Mr. Bush insists?

Even some of Mr. Bush's aides wonder if, in a few years, the battle against Al Qaeda might look more like the fight a century ago against anarchists who set off bombs and even managed to kill an American president and a host of European heads of state. Of course, those anarchists operated in a prenuclear age when only states could kill hundreds of thousands of people at a time. Mr. Bush argues, in effect, that he is the first president to reorient the country to face superempowered fanatics seeking weapons Hitler dreamed about and Stalin possessed.

So he may have the raw ingredients needed: A big idea, driven by a big event, 9/11. "One thing that makes for great legacies are great crises, and we have had that," said John Lewis Gaddis, the Yale historian who just published "The Cold War: A New History" (Penguin, 2005). "But it then requires not only the right diagnosis of the problem, but a strategy that proves durable enough that it survives the end of the administration that invented it, and is picked up by subsequent administrations of either party."

The prime example comes, not surprisingly, from Truman's time: containment.

Over the years, with input from the likes of George Kennan, that strategy evolved to exploit the divisions behind the Iron Curtain. Mr. Gaddis said the White House is starting to do the same among the jihadist groups. "The question historians will be asking is whether the Bush people will have established a similarly durable legacy," he said.

Clear victory helps a legacy, too. The Cold War took decades. As Mr. Bush's poll numbers began to fall last year, his aides clearly decided he couldn't afford the wait. So they put "victory" backdrops behind the president, and for the first time he described what victory against a shadowy enemy might look like. It comes in three stages.

"We think we changed the debate," one of the designers of that strategy said in Washington recently. "But it only worked because we married it up with admitting some mistakes and that was quite a fight, because the president doesn't talk that way."

To some historians, spinning the meaning of victory seems an exercise in futility. "It's ridiculous talk," John Dower, the historian who has chronicled war propaganda and written the definitive history of the American occupation of Japan. "People know what victory looks like," he said, and are unlikely to adopt the president's definitions.

But what truly sets Mr. Dower off are Mr. Bush's comparisons between rebuilding Iraq and the postwar rebuilding of Japan. He and others note that Japan was religiously unified with some history of parliamentary government and a bureaucracy ready to work as soon as the conflict ended.

Mr. Bush's team is already acutely aware that even if Iraq ultimately proves a success - far from a sure bet - a major part of his legacy hinges on his performance on the home front. Mr. Smith, of the Lincoln Library, argues that the president got a good start his first year, when "he changed the Republican orthodoxy on education from dismantling the Education Department to actually paying attention to the issue."

With a new chief justice confirmed, and an associate justice on deck, he has a shot at reformulating the Supreme Court, though a real judicial legacy might require one or two more resignations. There is little time left for a Social Security overhaul and fundamental tax reform, the two domestic issues Mr. Bush once thought would be his.

And then there is the big legacy question of how well Mr. Bush persuades the country that extraordinary times truly called for the assumption of extraordinary presidential powers. Mr. Bush argues that authorizing domestic wiretaps without warrants was part of his inherent power as commander in chief. His defenders cited Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War.

But as David Donald, the Lincoln biographer, notes, there was an uproar at the time. It all might be remembered differently had the war taken another turn. "A lot of people believed it wasn't necessary for Lincoln to do these things, just as a lot of people think that about Bush," he said.

    2006 Is So Yesterday, NYT, 1.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/weekinreview/01sanger.html?hp