US:THE US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a new domestic spying bill that protects telecommunications companies from legal action for helping president George Bush's warrantless phone and computer tapping.
Mr Bush welcomed the Bill, which will allow his domestic eavesdropping programme to continue but demands that all wiretaps should be approved by a special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.
"It will help our intelligence professionals learn enemies' plans for new attacks," the president said.
Democrats initially resisted the president's demand that telecoms firms that allowed the government to monitor phone lines without a warrant for more than six years should be shielded from lawsuits. Phone companies are facing dozens of legal actions from individuals who claim their privacy rights were breached.
Under the Bill, federal courts must dismiss such lawsuits if telecoms companies can show they received presidential orders telling them wiretaps were needed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack.
California congresswoman Jane Harman, who chairs the House intelligence committee, said the compromise measure sought to balance privacy rights with the government's responsibility to protect the country.
"This Bill, though imperfect, protects both," she said.
Civil liberties campaigners complained that the Democratic-run Congress had caved in to White House bullying over the Bill and turned the courts into a rubber stamp for the government.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted, however, that the Bill made clear that wiretaps could only be authorised by a court and rejected Mr Bush's claim that his war powers allowed him to order such surveillance.
"There is no inherent authority of the president to do whatever he wants. This is a democracy, not a monarchy," she said.
Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan told a congressional committee yesterday that the White House should come clean about its role in exposing the identity of former CIA officer Valerie Plame.
"This White House promised or assured the American people that at some point when this was behind us they would talk publicly about it. And they have refused to. And that's why I think more than any other reason we are here today and the suspicion still remains," Mr McClellan said.
Ms Plame maintains that the administration leaked her identity as retribution for criticism from her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, of Mr Bush's case for going to war in Iraq.
Mr McClellan said that former White House chief-of-staff Andy Card told him that the president and vice-president wanted him to publicly say that Lewis "Scooter" Libby, vice-president Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff at the time, was not involved in the leak.
"I was reluctant to do it. I got on the phone with Scooter Libby and asked him point-blank, 'Were you involved in this in any way?' And he assured me in unequivocal terms that he was not," Mr McClellan said.
It emerged that Mr Libby and former presidential adviser Karl Rove had discussed Ms Plame's identity with reporters. Libby was subsequently convicted of perjury for his role in covering up the leak.