Leaks Overshadow Obama’s Meeting With President of China

WASHINGTON â€" New disclosures about top-secret government programs to collect data on Americans’ phone calls and Internet activity are likely to overshadow President Obama’s two-day summit this weekend with the president of China.

Mr. Obama is set to meet with President Xi Jinping on a 200-acre estate in Southern California on Friday and Saturday, a historic visit that was expected to be a venue for Mr. Obama to raise concerns about Chinese cyber attacks and spying.

But now, that diplomatic conversation will take place in the midst of striking revelations about the United States’s surveillance operations on its own citizens.

Leaked documents published on Wednesday and Thursday revealed National Security Agency programs to collect vast amounts of information about the daily communications of United States residents with people inside the country and overseas.

One program involved an N.S.A. order to a subsidiary of Verizon Communications to provide records of all calls made, but not their content. The other program, according to leaked documents, involved agreements between the N.S.A. and several of the nation’s most prominent Internet companies to allow government agencies to collect data from the companies’ services.

Late Thursday evening, the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper, said in a statement that “only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S.” were targeted. He added that the surveillance was subject to a strict legal review to “minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.”

A spokesman for Mr. Obama, Josh Earnest, told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday that the judicial oversight of the program “reflects the president’s desire to strike the right balance between protecting our national security and protecting constitutional rights and civil liberties.” He added, “The president welcomes a discussion of the tradeoffs between security and civil liberties.”

Mr. Earnest was also peppered with questions about when and how Mr. Obama himself would discuss the N.S.A. programs.

“Can we expect the president to come out and talk about this at some point?” a reporter asked.

“I don’t anticipate that this will be part of the president’s remarks today,” Mr. Earnest said, referring to the speech at the North Carolina school.

“Not necessarily today, but at some point, as people become more aware of what’s been going on?” the reporter pressed.

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t rule it out,” Mr. Earnest said.

The response is complicated by Mr. Obama’s 3,000-mile trip to the West Coast. As is typical when the president travels, some top aides are accompanying him while others remain at the White House.

With the further disclosure later in the day of the program involving the Internet companies, it is all but certain that reporters will no longer be focusing on the relationship between the United States and China.

Instead, they are likely to press aggressively to be given more information about the surveillance programs and to hear directly from Mr. Obama about them. The challenge for the White House will be to juggle those requests with the demands of the mini-summit with Mr. Xi.

Former Bush Adviser Will Head His Foundation

With his presidential library now open, former President George W. Bush brought in new leadership for his foundation and public policy institute on Thursday, turning to one of his longest serving and most trusted advisers.

Margaret Spellings, who worked for Mr. Bush when he was governor of Texas and then followed him to Washington, where she worked in the White House and later became education secretary, will take over as president of the George W. Bush Foundation in September. She will also direct Mr. Bush’s public policy institute.

“Laura and I are thrilled that Margaret Spellings is coming home to Texas to join us at the Bush Center,” Mr. Bush said in a statement posted on the presidential center’s Web site. “Margaret is a smart, capable, effective leader who gets results.”

Ms. Spellings had remained in Washington after Mr. Bush left office, and founded a consulting firm that provides strategic advice to philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

She succeeds Mark Langdale, another longtime Bush friend who steered the foundation through its major fund-raising campaign to build the presidential library, which was dedicated in April. Mr. Langdale will serve on the foundation’s board of directors.

Ms. Spellings also takes over the public policy institute from James K. Glassman, a former undersecretary of state who built it from the ground up to focus on priorities like spreading democracy, improving global health and strengthening education.

Mr. Glassman will remain an adviser to Ms. Spellings but will return to the private sector to be a visiting fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “I loved the job,” he said in an e-mail to friends, “and, with April’s opening of the Bush Center, I accomplished what I set out to do.”

The Early Word: Contrast

In Today’s Times

• The Obama administration is keeping mum about whether it is using a controversial provision in the Patriot Act to collect data about business communications involving Americans, after the program was disclosed in a court order on Wednesday evening. Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt write that many questions about the scope and duration of the program remain unanswered, and its disclosure comes as the Obama administration faces criticism for using aggressive tactics to pursue leaks of classified information.

• By elevating Susan E. Rice to national security adviser and Samantha Power to replace her as ambassador to the United Nations, President Obama has put two outspoken advocates of intervention in humanitarian crises on a national security team known for its cautious approach to conflicts abroad, Mark Landler writes.

• In his second-term appointments and nominations, Mr. Obama is showing a willingness to offend Republicans with his selections as he tries to balance his newfound freedom from re-election concerns with a desire to forge bipartisan deals, Peter Baker observes.

• Ashley Parker recalls the Congressional career of Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, as he becomes the longest-serving member of the House when he serves his 20,997th day on Friday.

• In the continuing battle over who should have access to emergency contraception, the Obama administration is considering how to respond to a federal appeals court’s orders on Wednesday to make two-pill versions of emergency contraception available to women of all ages without a prescription or sales restrictions, Pam Belluck and Michael D. Shear report.

• Sabrina Tavernise explains that a federal panel’s recommendation for the government to collect better data on guns to help researchers understand the impact of firearms faces opposition from gun advocates reluctant to accept more reporting requirements and a Congress seeking budget cuts.

Happenings in Washington

• Economic reports expected Thursday include weekly jobless claims at 8:30 a.m., followed at 10 a.m. by weekly mortgage rates.

• At 9:30 a.m., the House Committee on Ways and Means will hold a hearing on the “spending culture and conference abuses” at the Internal Revenue Service, with testimony from Daniel I. Werfel, the acting commissioner of the agency; the head of its small business and self-employment division; and two Treasury inspectors general.

• At 10 a.m., Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will make her first appearance before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources since she was confirmed in April, as the panel examines her agency’s programs and activities.

• At the same time, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the Justice Department’s inspector general are expected to testify before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee at a budget hearing for the agency.

• At 10:30 a.m., environmental experts and officials will update the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on environmental restoration in the Gulf of Mexico three years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

• Michael Froman, the president’s pick to become the next United States trade representative, will testify when the Senate Finance Committee takes up his nomination at 11 a.m.

Tip of the Week: Blog More Efficiently on Tumblr

Tumblr, the blogging platform that was recently purchased by Yahoo, has been around since 2007 and hosts more than 111 million blogs. Over the years, the site has made sharing photos and other content from the Web even easier.

For example, you can post a photo, video or a piece of text to your Tumblr blog with an e-mail message by sending the material to a special address. Tumblr has instructions for publishing by e-mail here.

Third-party browser add-ons, like Post To Tumblr for Google Chrome and Tumblr Post for Mozilla Firefox can make it easier to share items found on the Web.

Tumblr has its own bookmarklet for quickly sharing Web content, as well as a collection of other timesaving tips on its site. You can find instructions for tasks like posting audio clips by phone, mass-editing posts and tags, and using keyboard shortcuts for navigation.

Tip of the Week: Blog More Efficiently on Tumblr

Tumblr, the blogging platform that was recently purchased by Yahoo, has been around since 2007 and hosts more than 111 million blogs. Over the years, the site has made sharing photos and other content from the Web even easier.

For example, you can post a photo, video or a piece of text to your Tumblr blog with an e-mail message by sending the material to a special address. Tumblr has instructions for publishing by e-mail here.

Third-party browser add-ons, like Post To Tumblr for Google Chrome and Tumblr Post for Mozilla Firefox can make it easier to share items found on the Web.

Tumblr has its own bookmarklet for quickly sharing Web content, as well as a collection of other timesaving tips on its site. You can find instructions for tasks like posting audio clips by phone, mass-editing posts and tags, and using keyboard shortcuts for navigation.