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House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) wants Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to provide Congress with information regarding an electronic government database that is believed to have been controversial among top-level Department of Justice officials. Conyers, along with Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Robert "Bobby" Scott, (D-Va.), sent a letter to Gonzales that was triggered by stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post, which said it was the database and not the warrantless wiretapping program that caused dissension within the administration. “At a time when the administration is seeking to make changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it is imperative that all members of the House Judiciary Committee be fully apprised of these controversial, and possibly unlawful, programs, and any related programs,” the lawmakers said. “It is difficult to craft appropriate legislative responses unless we have all of the relevant facts concerning these programs.” The lawmakers requested “copies of all opinions, memoranda, and background materials, as well as any dissenting views, materials, and opinions regarding the same, concerning the data base program disclosed…” In the letter, Conyers, Nadler and Scott also express their concern that the anonymous divulgence of the previously undisclosed database might have been a leak by Gonzales’s office “designed to rehabilitate previous controversial testimony” by the attorney general. |
