What is the NSA spying furor all about?

How did the program become public knowledge?
The New York Times published a story on it on Dec. 16. After that, the president and other officials began discussing it publicly.

Has its public disclosure of the NSA program harmed U.S. efforts to keep track of al Qaida?
CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, “The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission.”

Who in Congress was informed of the existence of the program prior to it being made public by the New York Times on Dec. 16?
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, received 12 briefings on it.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, received six briefings. Also briefed were the House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Peter Hoesktra, R- Mich., and ranking Democrat Rep. Jane Harman, D- Calif. Also briefed were the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate.

Roberts has said he is satisfied with the briefings.

Rockefeller has asked that all members of the Senate Intelligence Committee (eight Republicans and seven Democrats) get a full briefing on the program so that they can judge if it is legal and effective.

Has Rockefeller objected to the NSA program?
He said Thursday that the members of the Intelligence Committee have been “put in the untenable position of passing judgment on a program that they are prevented from understanding.”

But he has not objected to it, according to a Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee staffer.

Why were so few members briefed on the NSA program?
Senate Intelligence Committee Staff Director Bill Duhnke said the National Security Act of 1947 allows for limited briefings and “it has through custom and practice been done that way.”

Has anyone in Congress moved to cut off funding for the NSA surveillance program?
Not so far. But it remains an option. Duhnke explained that in wartime, “The president decides what he is going to do in fighting a war. Congress doesn’t decide tactically how things are going to happen. Congress doesn’t say, ‘No, you don’t do that operation,’ but if Congress wants to say, ‘No funds appropriated shall be used for the conduct of such operations, that’s its power.” 

What are the political reverberations of the NSA controversy?
Bush’s political advisor Karl Rove thinks the issue will work in favor of GOP candidates this fall. But it may cause libertarian-minded Republicans, some of whom also object to the USA Patriot Act, to question their support for GOP incumbents in this fall’s elections.

The NSA furor has also caused a split among Democrats.

Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, group of centrist and business-friendly Democrats, said last week, “If the president broke the law, that's unacceptable. But I think it's debateable whether he did.”

He warned that “Democrats are falling into a very, very large political trap” by opposing the NSA surveillance. "Democrats are not going to win elections until they can reassure people they are going to keep them safe."

But Feingold said, “It’s a death knell for the Democratic Party if we say a Republican president can take all the power he wants to protect us and that he doesn’t have to follow the law. We will look weak and we will look terrible for the elections if that’s the position we take. We have to take a strong stand against illegal conduct.”

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