Alberto Gonzales Will Testify Tomorrow
WHITFIELD: Now in the news, Interpol says the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing has escaped from a Yemeni prison. Jamal Ahmed Badawi and 22 other inmates fled through an underground tunnel Friday. At least 13 are convicted al Qaeda terrorists, 17 U.S. sailors died in the USS Cole attack back in 2000. Protesters furious over published newspaper cartoons of the prophet Muhammad torched the Danish Consulate in Beirut today. Street clashes erupted between Muslims and Christians. Officials say at least 18 people were injured. Denmark is recommending its citizens to leave Lebanon. Lebanon's interior minister resigned after the violence. The teenager suspected of attacking three men at a gay bar has died after a shootout with police. Police say 18-year-old Jacob Robida died at a Missouri hospital earlier today. He was captured in Arkansas yesterday. Police say he then shot dead a woman in his car and a police officer who had stopped his vehicle. The countdown is nearly over. Super Bowl XL kicks off in just under two hours from now in Ford Field in Detroit. The Pittsburgh Steelers are taking on the Seattle Seahawks. It's the Steelers' sixth Super Bowl the first for the Seattle Seahawks. Preparing for grilling from Congress tomorrow, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is to testify before a Senate committee over the government's controversial domestic spying program. CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux joins us from her post. Suzanne, what are we expecting to hear tomorrow?</s>SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Fred, we expect to hear very much of the same that we've heard from the president and the White House, really a part of that very aggressive campaign to defend this domestic spying program what the administration likes to call the terrorist surveillance program. Of course, tomorrow all eyes are going to be paying very close attention to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales when he takes the hot seat. Of course he is going to argue that the program is lawful and necessary. He will call it an essential element of our military campaign against al Qaeda, essentially making the case here, the 1978 law that requires the president to go before the four intelligence surveillance court to tell them to get a warrant before listening in on Americans. Gonzales essentially will say that the president did not need to do that and that he was within his authority to do so. The one big question, of course, that he is going face this coming from the Republican in charge of those hearings, here's what he had to say.</s>SEN. ARLEN SPECTER, (R) PENNSYLVANIA: Why the administration did not go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and tell them about the program? They have a great record for not leaking. They're experts in the field. The program could have been presented there, still could be and I think that's the biggest question the administration has to answer.</s>MALVEAUX: So Senator Arlen Specter definitely plans to ask that as one of his first questions of Alberto Gonzales and, of course, part of that as well, we expect that Gonzales will say that the president has the constitutional and legal authority to carry out the administration's secret surveillance in part, at least from Congress's authorization to go to war, to go after al Qaeda after September 11th.</s>SPECTER: I believe that contention is very strained and unrealistic. The authorization for the use of force doesn't say anything about electronic surveillance.</s>MALVEAUX: And, of course, the FISA Court actually does allow for a 72-hour grace period, if you will to go ahead and do that secret surveillance initially and 72 hours later get that warrant afterwards, but Gonzales will make the case that it is a process that is to cumbersome, that it is too slow. That there's still a number of steps that they have to go through, rather, in order to make that happen and they will give more details about that, but, Fred, of course, the big question here is the politics of all of this, just how damning this will be to the administration.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Suzanne Malveaux at the White House. Thanks so much. The other big question is whether the president had the authority to authorize those wiretaps without a warrant. Let's bring in an expert. Jonathan Turley is a constitutional law professor at George Washington University, good to see you, Jonathan.</s>JONATHAN TURLEY, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR: Thank you.</s>WHITFIELD: Or professor, should I say. All right. Well point- blank, as Suzanne underscored, the U.S. attorney general is likely to be asked is it necessary? Is it lawful? He will testify according to documents at that CNN has obtained, yes on both fronts. Do you agree with him?</s>TURLEY: I don't. I testified in the House hearing held by Democratic members a couple of weeks ago and I was asked the same question. I have to be blunt. I think the arguments being made that the president has this authority are legally absurd. Meaning it is absurd to argue that the force resolution gave him this authority, but more importantly what the president is arguing here is what the administration's argued in the past that the president has the inherent authority to trump or even violate federal law. That was the argument made earlier with regard to the torture memo, the infamous memo that they later rejected, with enemy combatants. Most recently the president when he signed the torture prohibition said he reserved the right to violate that law. It's a very dangerous and, frankly, destabilizing notion in our system, which is based on, limited and shared powers.</s>WHITFIELD: So, Congress is going to say, wait a minute. We're the ones who make law. So how is it the White House will think on any uncertain terms that Congress as a whole will be supportive of what it's doing?</s>TURLEY: Well this is really going to test the Republicans in the House and Senate and whether they will hold to the constitution or to loyalty to the president. There was a bizarre moment in the State of the Union when the president said, you know, I ordered this program and I'm going to do it again. This is a program that violates the federal law that these members enacted and they gave him a standing ovation. It's something I think the framers would never have anticipated. But it's going to be a real test of principle in my view and the pressure is on the Democrats as well because there's a lot of concern that there's been no effective opposition on this. The overwhelming majority of experts in this field have said that this dog won't hunt, that there is not a legal argument supporting the president in this case and that indeed what he did is a federal crime.</s>WHITFIELD: Well, is it your feeling that in terms of the Democrats it's a little too late and maybe perhaps too little overall? What we're hearing already according to "Time" Magazine that some Senate Democrats and the Judiciary Committee, Republican Chairman Arlen Specter we saw earlier in that tape have fired off nine letters to the Justice Department and to the White House demanding that information on this domestic spying program be revealed. How much more should or could they do?</s>TURLEY: I have to tell you, I believe the Democrats have been -- it's almost bizarre how little activity there's been. This is the only major lead team that seems to want to win the pennant by never leaving the dugout. Here you've got both Republicans and Democrats denouncing this as a crime. The proper response of Democratic senators is to refuse to pass business through the Senate, to refuse to cooperate. If they believe as many people do, that the president has ordered federal crimes you can't come up with anything more serious than that. And so, what a lot of people are wondering is why the Democrats have been doing all these sort of relatively passive gestures when the White House is out there trying to frame this debate and being very, very aggressive. I've got to tell you, I've been in this city a long time and I just don't understand it. I don't know what's happening in the Democratic Senate.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University. Thank you so much.</s>TURLEY: Thank you.</s>WHITFIELD: Well there is no shortage of stories and conspiracy theories about the National Security Agency because it is shrouded in such secrecy, but here are a few things we do know for sure.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The national security agency is the branch of American intelligence dedicated to cryptology. It designs codes to protect U.S. government information and communications. It works to break codes used by the nation's adversaries. The agency uses some of the world's most advanced technology since its founding in 1952, the NSA has helped coordinate military maneuvers in the Korean War, helped monitor Soviet communications during the Cold War and more recently tracked cell phone chips to identify the September 11th hijackers. One more thing about the NSA you may not know. The agency says its efforts in developing small storage devices helped lead to the creation of the taped cassette. NSA headquarters is in Fort Meade, Maryland. It was moved there in 1957 amid fears that Washington would be hit in a nuclear war. At Fort Meade and in the posts around the world, the agency employs mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, linguists and others. The employees are about half civilian and half military. The agency won't disclose its budget or say how many employees it has, but it says if it were a corporation, it would be among the Fortune 500's top 50.</s>WHITFIELD: A crew member aboard the packed ferry that went down in the Red Sea has told investigators the ship continued its journey even though a fire alarm rang shortly after it left the port on Thursday. CNN's Paula Hancocks is at the Egyptian port and filed this report by videophone. PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT</s>WHITFIELD: Since the deaths of children in Turkey from bird flu, does the medical world know anything more about the disease? I'll talk to an expert about what we know or should know at this point.