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President George W. Bush has exceeded the powers of his office by allowing eavesdropping on conversations of Americans, including lawyers and journalists, according to federal lawsuits seeking to ban the practice.

"No president I've ever seen or read about has ever claimed so much power for himself," Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Bill Goodman said Tuesday after his organization sued in Manhattan to stop the practice and require judicial oversight.

The center must assume that conversations its lawyers had with hundreds of people were subject to the secret government program to intercept phone calls and Internet communications, the lawsuit says.

"We now have to go back and audit, as much as we can, every communication over the past four or five years and determine whether anything was disclosed that might undermine our representation of our clients," said Goodman, whose group has represented hundreds of men held as enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"I'm personally outraged that my confidential communication with my clients may have been listened to by the U.S. government," said plaintiff Rachel Meeropol, an attorney at the center.

In Detroit, a similar lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of journalists, scholars, attorneys and national nonprofit organizations which communicate with people in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere.

The ACLU lawsuit said the National Security Agency eavesdrops on up to 1,000 people in the U.S. simultaneously as they communicate with people considered suspicious overseas.

It said the program has substantially impaired the ability of the plaintiffs to gather information from sources abroad as they try to locate witnesses, represent clients, do scholarly research or engage in advocacy.

"The program is inhibiting the lawful, constitutionally protected communications of plaintiffs and others not before the court," according to the lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Greenpeace and individuals.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, "We believe these cases are without merit and plan to vigorously defend against the charges." A message seeking comment was also left with the National Security Agency.

Bush is named only in the New York suit. But both suits blame him for authorizing the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans who might have conversations with people overseas who are suspected of ties to al-Qaida or terrorist organizations.

The program authorized eavesdropping of international phone calls and e-mails of people deemed a terrorism risk.

The New York lawsuit noted that federal law already lets the president order warrantless surveillance during the first 15 days of a war and allows court authorization of surveillance for agents of foreign powers or terrorist groups.

On Jan. 1, Bush called the program legal and vital to thwarting terrorism. Bush has said the program is legal under a congressional resolution passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The lawsuits allege that the program bypasses safeguards in a 1978 law that required court approval of electronic monitoring after public outrage erupted over surveillance of individuals including Martin Luther King Jr.

Josh Dratel, who has represented people accused of terrorism-related crimes, said in a statement supporting the ACLU case that lawyers like himself have long relied on privacy to gather facts to ensure trials are fair.

"That comfort level no longer exists, and it has sent a chill through the legal community," he said.

Larry Diamond, a Stanford University professor and plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit, said the program will further isolate U.S. social scientists, journalists and researchers from those who report on political developments or human rights abuses.

"One reason why the United States is held in such low esteem in these parts of the world today is because we are seen as hypocritical," he said. "We say we favor the rule of law, but we violate it when it suits us. We are against torture, but we won't unequivocally commit never to practice it. ... We vow to promote individual freedom as the central purpose of foreign policy, and then we violate individual freedom with this secret warrantless surveillance."

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1137492310828