Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has accused President George W Bush of a "power grab" and said she would cede some executive powers if elected.
Clinton was not specific on what powers Bush had assumed or what she would give back in the text of an interview publishedon the American section of British newspaper The Guardian's website.
Bush, in the months after the September 11 attacks, secretly authorised the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and emails between people in the United States and suspected terrorists abroad.
The eavesdropping programme was put under court supervision earlier this year, and in August the US Congress temporarily expanded the government's power to eavesdrop on foreign conversations of an individual in the United States without a court order for six months.
The powers expire in February and many lawmakers are wary of renewing them permanently as Bush wants.
Democrats have also complained about Bush's refusal to close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terrorism suspects have been held.
"Well, I think it is clear that the power grab undertaken by the Bush-Cheney administration has gone much further than any other president and has been sustained for longer," Clinton said.
Clinton said, "There were a lot of actions that they took that were clearly beyond any power the Congress would have granted or that in my view that was inherent in the Constitution."
She said if elected in November 2008 she would undertake a review with an eye toward giving up these powers.
"Oh absolutely," she said. "I mean that has to be part of the review that I undertake when I get to the White House, and I intend to do that," she said.
