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Bush faces first legal challenges on tapping

Suzanne Goldenberg

Suit addresses fears surrounding the extra-judicial surveillance

Washington: British writer Christopher Hitchens, one of the most reliable allies of the U.S. administration's conduct of the war on terror, has joined a lawsuit seeking a ban on a domestic spy programme authorised by President George Bush.

In two lawsuits filed separately on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union in Detroit and the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York City, the National Security Agency is accused of violating the constitution by eavesdropping on people without court oversight.

They represent the first legal challenge to the surveillance programme, which has outraged members of Congress and led to charges that Mr. Bush has overstepped his authority as President. In the ACLU suit, Mr. Hitchens joins other writers, Greenpeace and the Council on American-Islamic Relations in seeking an immediate end to the wiretaps, saying they violate constitutional rights to privacy and free speech.

The suit brought by Mr. Hitchens, Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at American Prospect magazine, James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA, and Barnett Rubin, an academic at New York University, addresses one of the primary fears surrounding the extrajudicial surveillance of telephone calls and E-mail — that the NSA used the eavesdropping programme to spy on opponents of the Bush administration.

Monitored

Mr. Hitchens and the other plaintiffs said they feared their E-mail and telephone calls were monitored, compromising their contacts in West Asia. ``People will say it's wartime and we have a deadly enemy, and I agree with that. I was in favour of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan very strongly, but it is even more important in such a time that we don't give away power to the unaccountable agencies that helped get us into this in the first place,'' Mr. Hitchens told the Guardian. ``It is extremely important we know what the rules are and there has to be a line drawn. You mustn't turn emergency or panic measures into custom or practice.''

In a separate suit brought against Mr. Bush and the chiefs of the NSA, the CIA, the FBI and other security agencies, the Centre for Constitutional Rights says it fears its legal work was hampered by the eavesdropping programme.

The CCR, whose lawyers represent detenus at Guantanamo and other suspects in the war on terror, said it believed communications with clients' families could have come under surveillance.

The two law suits arrive at a time when President Bush is under increasing pressure to demonstrate the legality of the NSA surveillance programme, which operated free of any judicial oversight.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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