Specter Says Cheney Tried to Derail Hearings

WASHINGTON —  The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee lashed out at Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday, accusing the vice president of secretly lobbying other GOP members of the committee to block hearings on the administration’s domestic surveillance program.

In an unusually sharp attack, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said Cheney had gone behind his back in an effort to persuade other committee members to derail his plans to require telecommunications companies to testify on whether they secretly gave U.S. spy agencies vast quantities of data on customer phone calls.

“I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some point,” Specter said in a letter sent to Cheney on Wednesday.

Specter said he learned of Cheney’s efforts from Republican members who had been approached by the vice president. His decision to confront Cheney represents an unusually public rupture between a senior GOP lawmaker and the White House. It also provides a rare public glimpse of the tactics employed by a vice president who prefers to operate behind the scenes.

Specter said Cheney’s apparent effort to bypass the committee chairman was “especially perplexing” because the two had attended a Republican caucus lunch together on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

“I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table,” Specter said.

Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president had not yet studied Specter’s letter. In an e-mail, she reiterated the administration’s position that no new legislation was needed to carry out the terrorist surveillance program.

“We will continue to work with Congress in good faith and listen to ideas of legislators,” McBride said. “We will ultimately have to make a decision as an administration on whether any particular legislation would enhance our ability to protect Americans against terrorists.”

Specter has been one of the most outspoken Republican critics of the Bush administration’s efforts to gather intelligence on U.S. residents without court warrants.

In recent months, news reports have laid out programs in which the National Security Agency has eavesdropped on international phone calls of U.S. residents, and assembled calling records on tens of millions of Americans, in an effort to identify domestic terrorist threats.

Specter has questioned the legality of the programs and proposed legislation that would bar President Bush and future administrations from bypassing 1970s-era laws requiring court approval for the surveillance of Americans. Specter has sought to hold hearings on the issue.

The White House has insisted that the president has the authority to authorize such operations because of his extensive wartime powers as commander in chief.

In his letter, Specter also said he had been told by other Republican members that “the telephone companies had been instructed not to provide any information to the committee as they were prohibited from disclosing classified information.” Specter warned that his committee would “consider confronting the issue with subpoenas” if the White House persisted in seeking to block hearings on the matter.

Democrats quickly seized on the issue.

“The interference by the vice president in the Senate’s efforts to conduct oversight of the White House’s domestic spying program is deeply troubling,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate minority leader.

“Just as disturbing is the fact that Senate Republicans have once again decided to deny the American people real oversight of the administration’s actions.”

*

Times wire services contributed to this report.