U.S. President George W. Bush said Friday that he strongly disagreed with a federal judge's ruling that the domestic eavesdropping program he had authorized shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were unconstitutional.

"I strongly disagree with that decision - strongly disagree," he told reporters at Camp David, Maryland, after meeting with his economic advisers.

Bush said that was why he had instructed the Justice Department to appeal the judge's ruling immediately.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled in Detroit, Michigan, on Thursday that the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency was unconstitutional.

Taylor, the first judge to rule against the program since its disclosure last December, said the program violated the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the constitution, and the law governing domestic wiretapping.

Defending the wiretapping program, Bush said the United States was a country "at war" and that the government "must give those whose responsibility it is to protect the United States the tools necessary to protect this country in a time of war."

"We strongly believe it's constitutional. And if al Qaida is calling into the United States, we want to know why they're calling," he said.

The program wiretapped, without court warrants, international communications including calls and e-mails, of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication was in the United States.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without warrants issued by a secret court, and the program's disclosure last December sparked a fierce political debate in Washington.

Source: Xinhua