US President George W. Bush said Monday that the Justice Department may conduct a full investigation into the leak of a secret program by the National Security Agency to eavesdrop international communications in the United States.

Bush said he had not ordered an investigation, but "there's kind of a natural progression that will take place when this kind of a leak emerges."

"And so the Justice Department, I presume, will proceed forward with a full investigation," he told a news conference at the White House.

Bush said it was "a shameful act" to disclose the very important program "in a time of war."

Discussing the program itself was helping the enemy and would enable the enemy to adjust, he added.

According to a report published last Friday by The New York Times, which first reported the secret program, Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct domestic eavesdropping of international communications despite legal prohibitions against doing, and under the authorization, the NSA eavesdrops, without court warrants as normally required, on as many 500 people inside the United States at any given time since 2002.

Before the program began, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations, the report said.

Source: Xinhua