directly related to this just like the three documents i shared that are already public, these other six contain no personal information, no presidential records, restrictive material. there is simply no reason they can be made public. i hope they will be this next round. it is difficult when to ask a question i have to ask the republicans, will you allow me to ask the question? i certainly never did that when i was chairman. now i had asked you in 2006 whether you seen any documents relating to president bush s warrantless wiretapping program or whether you heard anything about it. you acted, you heard about it with the rest of us in december 2005 with the new york time s reported it.
signing statements play a role in that. let me read something you ve written as it relates to why this is important to a discussion, different discussion on torture. mr. bush s aggressive use of presidential signing statements bad a contentious issue toward the end of judge kavanagh s tenure as staff secretary from 2003 to 2006. by then mr. bush had already challenged more provisions of new laws than all previous presidents combined, but those claims attracted little attention until he a effort issed he could bypass a december 2005 law in which congress over his objections had tightened restrictions against torture. now, is the contention here about torture or about kavanagh s view of power grabs by the president? the question is just what did he say to bush when he presented that signing statement to him. as i mentioned, often you would write a cover memo if you were the staff secretary. if there was a disagreement among the president s advisors about something that was going into
law. you can read those and in my second round we can go back and i d be happy to. i think you ll see we didn t make this up. senator, i m not suggesting you are. there was a tug of war among parties in the white house. i wanted to know which side you were on. count me in with john bellinger most the time with these things and that s my recollection and max waxman would be another one and that is my recollection sitting here and i ll study these. let me ask you a question on wiretapping in december 2005 there was a report that there was the intercept of communication of americans outside of a court order without
sure. and then in my second round, we ll go back to it. sure. i d be very happy to baize i think you ll see that we didn t make this up. senator, i m not suggesting you are. and there was a there was a tug-of-war among parties in the white house. i m sure of that. i wanted to know which side you were on. well, count me in with john belanger most of the time on these, okay? and that s my recollection and matt waxman would be another one. and so that s my recollection, senator, sitting here. i ll study these. okay. let me ask you a question on wiretapping. in december 2005, news broke that president bush ordered the nsa to intercept the content of certain communications.
binder. let me just hold up the answer and we ll get you the documents. let me do the next question. in december 2005 after the passage of the detainee treatment act, you advocated that president bush should issue a signing statement to accompany the law. in an e-mail you sent to steven bradbury and others, you said the signing statement would, and i quote, this is your quote, help inoculate against the potential of having the administration criticized some time in the future for not making sufficient changes in interrogation policy in light of the mccain portion of the amendment. this statement clearly and in a formal way would be hard to dispute later, puts down a marker to the effect that mccain is best read as essentially codifying existing interrogation