Former US secretary of state Colin Powell said on Sunday that it would not have been "that hard" for President George W. Bush to have obtained warrants for eavesdropping on domestic telephone and Internet activity, but that he saw "nothing wrong" with the decision not to do so.
"My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants," Powell said. "And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that."
But Powell added that "for reasons that the president has discussed and the attorney general has spoken to, they chose not to do it that way."
"I see absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions," he said.
Asked if such eavesdropping should continue, Powell said, "Yes, of course it should continue."
Powell said he had not been told about the eavesdropping activity when he served as secretary of state.
He spoke on the ABC News program This Week about the disclosure, first reported in the New York Times, that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to intercept communications by Americans without approval from a special foreign intelligence court.
Parting company
Though Powell stopped short of criticizing Bush, his suggestion that there was "another way to handle it" was another example of his parting company on a critical issue with the president he served for four years.
This fall, Powell broke with the administration on the issue of torture, endorsing a move by Republican Senator John McCain to pass a measure in Congress banning cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees by all US authorities, including intelligence personnel.
The White House at first opposed the measure but later accepted it.
Since leaving office at the end of Bush's first term, Powell has been involved in several business and public service ventures, including the establishment of the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies at City College of New York, his alma mater.
Iraq differences
On Iraq, Powell repeated earlier statements that differed somewhat from those of Bush, saying he did not know whether he would have advocated going to war with Iraq if he had known that the country had no stockpiles of illicit weapons.
Referring to the case for going to war if there were no such weapons, Powell said he would have told the president, "You have a far more difficult case, and I'm not sure you can make the case in the absence of those stockpiles."
Powell said he expected US troop levels to continue to go down in the coming year out of necessity, because it will become difficult to sustain the current high levels and because the effort to train Iraqis should be successful.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
RSS