Senate committee to investigate eavesdropping in Iraq

The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to investigate claims made this week by two former military intelligence officers that they routinely eavesdropped on the private telephone conversations of journalists, aid workers and military officers in Iraq.

Adrienne Kinne, a former Army reservist, and David Murfee Faulk, a Navy linguist, told ABC News on Thursday they often listened to and transcribed personal phone conversations placed between Iraq and the United States. Kinne said some of those calls were made by journalists and involved “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.”

In response, Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D -W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced Thursday his committee would investigate those allegations, according to several news reports.

"We have requested all relevant information from the Bush Administration," Rockefeller told ABC Thursday. "The Committee will take whatever action is necessary."

President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct secret, warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens’ conversations with people abroad after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It’s unclear if Kinne’s and Faulk’s reports were part of that program.

Opponents of warrantless wiretapping have warned for years that journalists’ phone conversations could be among those tapped.