"Is the president asserting the presidential communication privilege, which applies only to documents involving communications with the White House?" asked Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.
It was satisfied the government could work out the details of such authorisation, including those pertaining to cases requiring "special consideration" such as those involving access to data involving communications with lawyers, MPs or journalists.
The agency is under rules preventing it from investigating that so-called haystack of data unless it has a "reasonable, articulable" justification, involving communications with terrorists abroad, he added.
According to a top-secret draft report by the NSA's inspector general – published for the first time today by the Guardian – the agency began "collection of bulk internet metadata" involving "communications with at least one communicant outside the United States or for which no communicant was known to be a citizen of the United States".
It was originally passed to allow the government to collect intelligence involving communications with "agents of foreign powers".
But House officials confirmed Saturday that the case involved communications Ms. Waters had in fall 2008 with federal officials that at least indirectly touched on the fate of OneUnited, a Boston-based bank with branches in Massachusetts, Florida and California.
The preferred liaison activities involve communications, both with individuals face-to-face, and in partner meetings.
A House ethics subcommittee has charged Ms. Waters, 71, a 10-term congresswoman, in a case involving communications that she had with the top executive of a bank that her husband owned stock in while it was applying for a federal bailout in 2008, two House officials said.
He said that any strategy involving communications at the event also had to take on board the human factor of allowing players to have contact with their families.
These pathways involve communications of growth hormone, GSK3β and cyclin D3.
