WASHINGTON, Dec 18: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday President George Bush’s secret order to allow spying on people in the United States was legal and necessary to prevent terrorism, but lawmakers from both parties called for Congress to investigate.

Ms Rice, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” said disclosure of the eavesdropping could jeopardize terrorism investigations.

“The more we get the exposure of these very sensitive programmes, the more it undermines our ability to follow terrorists, to know about their activities,” she said.

Ms Rice said President Bush used his authority so “people could not communicate inside the United States about terrorist activity with people outside the United States, leaving us vulnerable to terrorist attack.”

After initially refusing to comment on a New York Times report on the covert programme, Bush said on Saturday that after the Sept 11 attacks, he had authorized the National Security Agency “to intercept the international communications of people with known links to Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.”

Ms Rice reiterated President Bush’s statement that the wiretapping of telephone conversations and other communications was legal and did not violate the US constitution.

A 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, makes it illegal to spy on US citizens in the United States without court approval.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Ms Rice said the programme was carefully controlled, with a limited scope focusing only on those believed to have links to Al Qaeda terrorists.—Reuters