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Before Vacation, President Will Take Questions From Media Obama to Offer Plan Meant to Ease Concerns on Surveillance
(about 3 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Obama will take questions from the news media on Friday afternoon, a day before beginning a weeklong vacation in Martha’s Vineyard that will be his last extended break from Washington before what is expected to be a contentious fall clash with Congress. WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday sought to get his administration ahead of the roiling debate over National Security Agency surveillance, moving to release new information about spying activities and planning to call for changes aimed at bolstering public confidence that the programs do not intrude too far into Americans’ privacy, officials said.
Mr. Obama will most likely face many questions about a recent surge of national security news, including a continuing terrorism threat that caused the administration to close dozens of diplomatic facilities around the world and order Americans to leave Yemen. At a time when leaks by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden have ripped the veil from the agency’s expansive spying both inside the United States and abroad, Mr. Obama scheduled a news conference for 3 p.m. on Friday, at which he was expected to concede a need for greater openness and safeguards over vast American surveillance efforts.
The only public comments from the president on the terrorism threat came during an appearance on NBC’s “Tonight Show” earlier this week when he told the show’s host, Jay Leno, that the government was not overreacting in locking down nearly 20 diplomatic posts and issuing a worldwide travel warning after intercepted electronic conversations raised concerns of possible terrorist attacks abroad. “The president shares the views that have been expressed by civil libertarians and critics of the government,” a senior administration official said in a conference call with reporters ahead of the news conference. “It’s not enough for him as president to have confidence in these programs. The American people have to have confidence in them as well.”
Reporters are also likely to grill the president on reports of a series of drone strikes in Yemen in the past week that appears to be an effort by the United States to increase its attacks on Yemen’s Qaeda offshoot — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Twelve people died in three drone strikes in Yemen on Thursday, according to a Yemeni military official. And on Friday, the United States ordered that staff members be removed from its consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, citing terrorist threats Among other steps, Mr. Obama was expected to announce the creation of a high-level task force of outside intelligence and civil liberties specialists to advise the government about how to balance security and privacy as computer technology makes it possible to gather ever more information about people’s private lives.
The White House news conference, which is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m., will be Mr. Obama’s first since April, though he has answered questions in a variety of interviews since then. The president has also made several statements to the news media without taking questions, including after the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. The president was also expected to throw his administration’s support behind a proposal to change the procedures of the secret court that approves electronic spying under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in order to make its deliberations more adversarial. The court, created in 1978, was initially envisioned to carry out a limited role of reviewing whether there was sufficient evidence to wiretap someone as a suspected foreign terrorist or spy.
In addition to the terrorism threat, recent news from overseas includes Mr. Obama’s decision to cancel a planned summit with the Russian president, Vladimr V. Putin, in part because of Russia’s refusal to return Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive former intelligence analyst, to the United States to face charges of leaking national security secrets. But in recent years, it has played a far more sweeping role, issuing lengthy and complex secret opinions interpreting surveillance laws and constitutional privacy rights, without the benefit of opposing lawyers to argue against the Justice Department or file any appeals. Mr. Obama was expected to announce his support for creating an adversarial player in such arguments.
It will also be the news media’s first opportunity to press Mr. Obama in a news conference about the turmoil in Egypt, where the military helped engineer the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. The Obama administration was also planning to release a previously classified legal analysis explaining why the government believes it is lawful under a provision of the Patriot Act known as Section 215 for the N.S.A. to collect and store logs of every phone call dialed or received in the United States.
Domestically, Mr. Obama will return from Martha’s Vineyard in a week to confront a series of thorny disputes with his Republican rivals on Capitol Hill. At the same time, the N.S.A. was expected to release a paper outlining its role and authorities, officials said. The six- to seven-page document was described as setting up a “foundation” to help people understand the legal framework for its activities. Next week, the agency will open a Web site designed to explain itself better to the public amid Mr. Snowden’s disclosures.
Republicans in the House have continued to press for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama’s signature health care law. Some in the party have urged their colleagues to refuse a needed increase in the nation’s debt ceiling unless the law is repealed. “What people are beginning to see in the leaks are elements of a blueprint at N.S.A., but not an operating manual,” another senior administration official said in the conference call. “What the paper will try to do is to essentially put them in context. This is a framework.”
That could lead to a repeat of the clash between the president and Congress in 2011, when tensions flared amid dire warnings of economic danger if the debt limit was not increased.
Lawmakers are also at a standstill over the nation’s current budget, which could lead to a government shutdown later this fall if a deal about how much to spend and how much to cut is not reached.
Mr. Obama will have the public stage largely to himself Friday afternoon, with Congress on its August recess and Washington largely emptied because of summer vacations.
On Saturday, Mr. Obama plans to stop briefly in Florida for a speech to the group Disabled American Veterans before heading on vacation.