Raid Was Tipping Point For an Angry Congress

Another law enforcement official noted that Hastert and other lawmakers had strongly supported the Justice Department's aggressive search and surveillance strategies for terrorism investigations. "It's fair to say we would have expected similar support when it comes to public corruption," the official said.

But amid multiple investigations of congressmen, many stemming from the conviction of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, this one struck too close to home. "This is the one that sends them to jail," said Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University constitutional law specialist and former Reagan administration lawyer. "They just watched [former Republican Rep.] Duke Cunningham go to jail. There's an investigation of [Rep.] Bob Ney. . . . There are all the peripheral people caught up in the Abramoff matter."

Others rejected the supposition that Republican members saw themselves potentially at risk. "There was a level of contempt in the raid that resonated with members," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor.

The situation also became enmeshed in other battles. Hastert, for instance, was angry that Bush forced out his friend, CIA Director Porter J. Goss. House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) -- who has scheduled a Tuesday hearing titled "Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?" -- was already fighting the White House on immigration legislation.

In this case, though, Congress found an unlikely ally within the White House for its point of view: Cheney. Although a strong proponent of executive power, Cheney and his staff sided with Hastert concerning the raid. "They're each other's go-to guys," a Republican strategist close to the White House said of Cheney and Hastert. Besides, given the president's political woes, "they need Hastert bad."

But Kmiec said the stakes are even larger than the outcome of the fight over the search. The dispute speaks to the broader balance of power between executive and legislative branches in a time of war, he said, as most exemplified in the debate over the NSA surveillance.

"If the Congress is wrong to pry into the intelligence methods and information that the president is amassing for purposes of protecting us, the consequences of that are we will not be protected," Kmiec said. "If the president is wrong, we will have distorted the protections of privacy and civil liberty for a generation or more, and maybe forever. Those stakes seem to me to be rather dramatic."

Staff writers Dan Eggen and Eric Pianin contributed to this report.