A GOP Rebel on Eavesdropping

By Massimo Calabresi

President Bush may wave away Democratic critics of domestic eavesdropping, but one challenger is proving harder to dismiss: Heather Wilson, a plainspoken Air Force veteran from New Mexico and four-term G.O.P. Congresswoman little known outside of national-security circles. As chair of the House subcommittee that authorizes technical intelligence, she has waged a behind-the-scenes battle for access to information about the controversial surveillance program since word of it leaked in December. She won a significant victory last week. After she called for a full investigation of the spying, the White House ended 54 days of stonewalling and briefed the full House Intelligence Committee.

Two days later, at the House G.O.P. retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore, after Bush told lawmakers that he had resisted briefing them to keep more program details from getting leaked, Wilson retorted that the original leak appeared to have come from his Administration and that Congress has a right and a duty to exercise oversight. "The men who wrote the Constitution feared most a strong Executive with control of a standing army," Wilson tells TIME. "Our Constitution is set up to protect all of us from tyranny."

Wilson served with Condoleezza Rice on George H.W. Bush's National Security Council and plans to rewrite the cold war-era law controlling domestic eavesdropping in collaboration with House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, who showed his willingness to oversee the Executive Branch last week by sending 51 questions about the program to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "The law was written in 1978, pre-cell phone, pre-Internet," Wilson says. "We need to do some updating."

The issue could make Wilson the political canary in the '06 coal mine. Up for re-election--in a dead heat with New Mexico's attorney general--Wilson has received more than 500 letters about the controversial program. Last week she started getting ones thanking her for taking on Bush.