Lawyer Questions Evidence in Terror Case [View All]

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A lawyer for an Islamic scholar convicted of exhorting followers to take up arms against U.S. forces overseas wants a judge to determine whether evidence against his client was gathered by a secret domestic spying program.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said there "seems to be a great likelihood" that Ali al-Timimi, a northern Virginia Islamic cleric, was "subject to this operation."

President Bush has acknowledged that within days of the Sept. 11 attacks he authorized the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless intercepts of conversations between people in the United States and others abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates.

In doing so, the administration bypassed the nearly 30-year-old secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court established to oversee the government's handling of espionage and terrorism investigations.