US spy hearing a ‘priority’

A KEY Republican committee chairman put the Bush administration on notice yesterday that his panel would hold hearings into a report that the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States.

Republican senator Arlen Specter said he would make oversight hearings by his panel next year "a very, very high priority."

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Mr Specter, a chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Other key bipartisan members of Congress also called on the administration to explain and said a congressional investigation may be necessary.

Another Republican senator, John McCain, appeared annoyed that the first he had heard of such a program was through a New York Times story published yesterday. He said the report was troubling.

When asked early yesterday, neither Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice nor White House press secretary Scott McClellan would confirm or deny that the super-secret NSA had spied on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002.

That year, following the September 11 attacks,

President George W Bush authorised the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and international emails of hundreds perhaps thousands of people inside the US, the Times reported.

Before the programme began, the NSA limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations. Overseas, 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time.