Admiral Bobby Ray Inman has become the highest-ranking former NSA official to speak out about the domestic spy program. “There clearly was a line in the FISA statutes which says you couldn’t do this,” said Inman last week in remarks that have received little attention. [includes rush transcript]

On Thursday the Senate Intelligence Committee will open its confirmation hearing for General Michael Hayden to become the next director of the CIA. Hayden is the former head of the National Security Agency who authorized the agency in 2001 to begin monitoring the phone calls of U.S. citizens without legally required court warrants.

While Hayden and the Bush administration have defended the secret domestic surveillance program, it is now being criticized by an unlikely source — a former director of the NSA. Last week Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who headed the NSA from 1977 to 1981, spoke in New York at a forum sponsored by the New York Public Library and the Century Foundation. It was part of the library’s Live at the NYPL series.

Besides an article at the website Wired News, Inman’s statements have received almost no media attention even though he is believed to the highest ranking former NSA official to speak out about the program. At the forum he disputed the Bush administration’s claim that Congress authorized the secret spy program when it authorized the president to use force following the Sept. 11 attacks. Inman also said the program clearly contradicts the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which Congress passed in 1978 — at the time he was head of the National Security Agency.

• Bobby Ray Inman, Former Director of the National Security Agency, speaking at a forum sponsored by the New York Public Library and the Century Foundation.
  - Full transcript of forum available