Transcript for December 18

MR. TIM RUSSERT:  Our issues this is Sunday:  the Iraqi people vote in large numbers. What now for their country and for our men and women in Iraq?  With us, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. And for the Democrats, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan. Rice and Levin, only on MEET THE PRESS.

Then the politics of Iraq and immigration, and voter attitudes on the president and Congress. Insights and analysis from John Harwood from The Wall Street Journal and Gwen Ifill from PBS' "Washington Week."

And in our MEET THE PRESS Minute, William Proxmire, who served in the United States Senate for 32 years, died this week at age 90. He first appeared on MEET THE PRESS in 1959.

But first with us now the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. Welcome back.

SEC'Y CONDOLEEZZA RICE:  Thank you, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT:  Before I get to Iraq, let me turn to the issue on the front page of all the papers, and that's about domestic spying and refer you and our viewers to an article in Friday's New York Times to give it some context: "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts. Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track down possible `dirty numbers' linked to Al-Qaeda, the officials said. ... The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed constitutional limits on legal searches. `This is really a sea change,' said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. `It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches.'"

The president yesterday confirmed that this operation was under way for the last several years. What is the legal authority?  What is the constitutional authority for the president to eavesdrop on American citizens without getting court approval?

SEC'Y RICE:  Tim, first much all, the president has authorized ­– and it's important to talk about what he's actually authorized. He's authorized the National Security Agency to collect information about the activities of a limited number of people with ties to Al-Qaeda so that there is not a seam between the territory of the United States and the territory abroad. One of the most compelling outcomes of the 9-11 Commission was that a seam had developed. Our intelligence agencies looked out, our law enforcement agencies looked in, and people--terrorists could exploit the seam between them. So the president is determined that he will have the ability to make certain that that seam is not there, that the communications between people, a limited number of people with Al-Qaeda links here and conversations with terrorist activities outside will be understood so that we can detect and thereby prevent terrorist attacks.

The president is acting under his constitutional authority, under statutory authority. I'm not a lawyer, but the president has gone to great lengths to make certain that he is both living under his obligations to protect Americans from another attack but also to protect their civil liberties. And that's why this program is very carefully controlled. It has to be re-authorized every 45 days. People are specially trained to participate in it, and it has been briefed to leadership of the Congress and including the leadership of the Intelligence Committee. So in a time when the war on terrorism is not just one in which people carry on activities outside the country but also activities inside the country, the president is drawing on his constitutional authority to protect the country.

MR. RUSSERT:  The law is very clear that a person is guilty of an offense unless they get a court order before seeking to wiretap an American citizen. Why did the president not get a court order?

SEC'Y RICE:  The FISA is indeed an important source of that authority, and in fact, the administration actively uses FISA. But FISA, in 1970...

MR. RUSSERT:  The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

SEC'Y RICE:  The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, exactly. FISA, which came out of 1978 at a time when the principal concern was, frankly, the activities of people on behalf of foreign governments, rather stable targets, very different from the kind of urgency of detection and thereby protection of a country that is needed today. And so the president has drawn on additional authorities that he has under the Constitution and under other statutes.

MR. RUSSERT:  What are the other authorities?

SEC'Y RICE:  Tim, again, I'm not a lawyer, but the president has constitutional authority and he has statutory authorities.

MR. RUSSERT:  But no one's explained that. No one has said what is--in fact, in 1972...

SEC'Y RICE:  Tim...

MR. RUSSERT:  ...President Nixon tried to wiretap American citizens and the Supreme Court ruled he violated the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans.

SEC'Y RICE:  Tim, let's remember that we are talking about the ability to collect information on the geographic territory that is the United States. Some people are American citizens; others are not. What the president wants to prevent is the use of American territory as a safe haven for communications between terrorist operating here or people with terrorist links operating here and people operating outside of the country.

You know, I sat through the 9/11 Commission, and in the 9/11 Commission, one of the biggest and most compelling concerns was that we had to understand the link between what terrorists were doing abroad and what terrorists were doing here. Prior to September 11, there were people sitting inside the United States--the president talked about two of them, Mitar and Hamzi, who were operating inside the United States, communicating outside of the United States. That's a scene that you cannot allow to exist in a time when if somebody now commits a crime, where this is not law enforcement of the kind where people commit a crime, you then investigate that crime and bring them to justice. This is a case where if people commit the crime, then thousands die. And that's what we learned on September 11 and so the president under his authorities – he is commander in chief; he needs to protect this country – has authorized this program. But he is also very concerned about civil liberties and it is why there are so many safeguards attached to this program and why, frankly, several members of Congress were briefed.

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