Civil Liberties and Terrorism - US Department of State

United States Presents Report to U.N. Anti-Torture Committee

Claims of torture and mistreatment by U.S. personnel in the War on Terror have become so exaggerated and overstated that they are “absurd,” the State Department’s top legal adviser tells a U.N. human rights committee. John B. Bellinger III tells the U.N. Committee Against Torture that there have been “relatively few actual cases of abuse and wrongdoing” by U.S. personnel, and that these isolated cases do not reflect widespread abuses. (complete text)

U.S. Attorney General Gonzales Says Secret Wiretapping Lawful

The U.S. program that conducts terrorist surveillance is “lawful in all respects,” Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 6 during his testimony defending the National Security Administration’s program.

Republican Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania, committee chair, said the purpose of the hearings was to examine how the president’s surveillance program fits with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was passed in 1978 and prohibits electronic surveillance without an order from a secret court. (complete text)