Bush defends secret spying in US

US PRESIDENT George Bush has unapologetically defended his administration’s right to conduct secret spying in the United States as “critical to saving American lives”.

Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA) has eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States without court-approved warrants.

Mr Bush said steps like these would help fight terrorists like those who were involved in the 9/11 plot.

In an eight-minute address on Saturday, the president made clear he has no intention of halting his authorisations of the monitoring activities and said public disclosure of the programme by the news media had endangered Americans.

The president said congressional leaders had been briefed on the operation more than a dozen times.

House Minority Leader, California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, said she had been told on several occasions that Mr Bush had authorised unspecified activities by the NSA, the nation’s largest spy agency. She said she had expressed strong concerns at the time, and that Mr Bush’s statement “raises serious questions as to what the activities were and whether the activities were lawful”.