PRESIDENT George W Bush has gone on the offensive over accusations that he abused his executive power by allowing the secret wiretapping of Americans without a court warrant.

A senior intelligence official said this weekend that the president personally approved the domestic spying programme more than three dozen times after the September 11, 2001 attacks to protect the nation from potentially catastrophic terrorist threats.

“Only if these conditions apply do we even begin to think about this,” the official said. He added that the eavesdropping was pronounced lawful by the attorney-general and White House counsel each time before Bush signed off on the programme.

Bush hopes to turn the tables on his Democrat opponents by portraying them as soft on terror. The September 11 commission found that two of the suicide hijackers had liaised with members of Al-Qaeda abroad. “We didn’t know who they were until it was too late,” the official said.

The New York Times set off a political storm on Friday by revealing that the president had authorised the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the international telephone and e-mail communications of hundreds of US citizens without warrants. Americans are protective of their civil liberties and the revelations helped to scupper Senate approval for renewing significant elements of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act.

Bush supporters, who had expected the president to bask in the success of the Iraqi elections for at least a day or two, are concerned that the White House’s credibility has taken a battering.

Edward Kennedy, the Democrat senator for Massachusetts, said: “They tell us, ‘Trust us, we follow the law.’ Give me a break.”

Under pressure from Congress, the White House was obliged to come to a deal last week with John McCain, the independent-minded Republican senator, over his bill banning cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees. A fresh assault on the issue of civil liberties followed.

“Republicans are very angry and unhappy,” said Byron York of the conservative journal National Review. “They feel they are in the middle of a giant struggle and it is not in Iraq but at home. Democrats have been aggressively pursuing the ‘Bush lied, people died’ strategy and it has hurt him.”

There is considerable ill- feeling on the right about the timing of The New York Times’s scoop. The newspaper sat on its story for a year after the White House expressed concerns that it could jeopardise national security, but published it on the morning the Patriot Act was due to be reviewed in the Senate.

The online news service the Drudge Report claimed the article was related to the forthcoming publication of State of War, a book on the Bush administration and the CIA by James Risen, The New York Times’s national security correspondent. His story could have been written three months ago when his manuscript was delivered to the publishers, Drudge claimed.

“The bottom line in this is an all-out effort to tie our hands in dealing with the enemy,” said Rush Limbaugh, the influential right-wing radio host. By pushing this theme, conservatives hope to back Bush’s opponents into a corner on the issue of patriotism and the war on terror.

It is familiar ground from the 2004 presidential election. This time, however, a number of Republican senators and congressmen — emboldened by the president’s low approval ratings — are siding with the Democrats on national security issues.

McCain’s anti-torture bill was passed overwhelmingly by Congress and four Republican senators lined up with the Democrats against renewing parts of the Patriot Act which are due to expire on December 31.

Arlen Specter, the moderate Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, said there was “no doubt” that the monitoring of American citizens by the NSA was “inappropriate” and has promised to launch a senate inquiry in the new year.

Bush refused to respond in detail to the eavesdropping allegations, citing security concerns. He said: “I think the point that Americans really want to know is twofold. One, are we doing everything we can to protect the people? And two, are we protecting civil liberties as we do so? My answer to both is, yes, we are.”

A court-approved warrant still has to be obtained before eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails between Americans, but not for overseas communications.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 terrorist suspects are regularly monitored abroad and some of their calls have been linked — directly or indirectly — to American citizens.

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