Eavesdropping targets only al Qaeda - US official

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - A U.S. domestic eavesdropping program targets only people suspected of ties to al Qaeda and there is no broad net cast over Americans' communications overseas, the architect of the effort said on Sunday.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, deputy director of intelligence, said on "Fox News Sunday," "this isn't a drift net ... This is very specific and very targeted when it comes to the collection of the content of communications coming in or leaving the United States."

Hayden said that the intercepts target only those who intelligence analysts believe are "al Qaeda or al Qaeda affiliates."

"This focused on al Qaeda. The only justification we have to undertake this program is to detect and prevent attacks against the United States," he added.

Critics charge that U.S. President George W. Bush has allowed intelligence services to violate privacy guarantees in the U.S. Constitution and laws regulating the monitoring of communications.

Bush authorized the program to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of U.S. citizens without first obtaining warrants, with a goal of tracking down al Qaeda suspects following the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the administration's vigorous defense of the program, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday is expected to sound the same theme of limited, selected monitoring of U.S. citizens' communications when he testifies before a Senate committee.

Time magazine reported that Gonzales will say that contrary to media reports, the program "is not a dragnet that sucks in all conversations and uses computer searches to pick out calls of interest."

The administration refers to the eavesdropping as a limited "terrorist surveillance program" and says it is justified by Bush's role as commander in chief and by the congressional authorization of military force he was granted after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without the approval of a special secret court.

Hayden emphasized the administration's belief that the process of seeking court warrants did not give intelligence analysts the "speed and agility" to monitor communications quickly.

As head of the National Security Administration at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, Hayden had briefed leaders of Congress on the eavesdropping program.

Hayden declined to comment on story in The Washington Post on Sunday which said that nearly all of the thousands of Americans subjected to the domestic-surveillance program have been dismissed as potential suspects.

According to the newspaper, intelligence officers heard nothing suspicious in the calls and saw no reason to suspect most of the people of improper activity, according to current and former government officials and sources in the private sector familiar with the technology being used.

However, Hayden said it was incorrect to assume analysts "somehow grab the content of communications and then use the content of the communications to determine which of the communications we really want to listen to."

"That is not true."

Asked if there had been any targeting of communications by political opponents of the administration, Hayden said there was neither the time, nor the legal authority, to do that.