SUGAR GROVE, W.Va. -- This seems an unusual place for a spying mission.

After all, Sugar Grove is the middle of nowhere, between two mountain ranges in a sparsely populated corner of West Virginia, where people wave to everyone who drives by.

It's a town seemingly with no secrets, but it's now at the center of a political firestorm in the battle between national security and personal privacy.

John Bowers, who owns the country store in the heart of this community where he has lived his 77 years, has heard the talk.

That the naval base just five miles up the road and its work on satellite communications may not have anything to do with "ship-to-shore" communications as nearby residents have believed for years.

That the base, 100 miles from water and tucked between the Allegheny and Shenandoah mountain ranges, is a central part of an international intelligence-gathering network that attempts to keep the country safe.

That the network, a part of the ultrasecretive National Security Agency, has come under fire in the nation's capital from both liberals and conservatives for spying not only on foreign targets -- but also on American citizens.

Sugar Grove, where it is believed the NSA intercepts phone calls and e-mails made between the eastern United States and suspected terrorists overseas, probably will not be mentioned while senators debate whether protecting the lives of Americans is more important than protecting their civil liberties.

Hearings begin Monday in Washington into whether President Bush used the network to abuse executive powers.

In Sugar Grove, a community just 133 miles northeast of Roanoke, there is no debate.

"If I can't do anything about it, I don't worry about it," Bowers said.

Listening to Russia

Virgil Homan Jr., who's known throughout town as Junior, doesn't really know what happens now at Naval Information Operations Center Sugar Grove.

But 50 years ago, Homan was instrumental in helping the U.S. government decide to locate to the area.

In the mid-1950s, Homan monitored weather stations throughout the area -- which sits five miles from the Virginia state line.

The information he gathered helped Uncle Sam decide that this would be the perfect spot -- atmospherically speaking -- for a high-tech satellite center that would help monitor foreign communications at the height of the Cold War.

"They wanted to listen to Russia," he said.

The dishes originally were built to monitor enemy radio communications that, before the space era, went not only from point A to point B, but also floated into space and allowed other countries to steal them.

By the late 1970s, countries began using satellites to improve the speed of overseas communications. Receiving stations were built throughout the world, including the West Virginia town of Etam. The Sugar Grove dishes, starting in 1980, focused on grabbing those signals out of the air before they reached Etam, just 60 miles away, according to a European Union investigation into the NSA spying program in 2001.

This so-called shadow receiving over the years expanded to include e-mails and cellphone calls. And according to the EU report, Sugar Grove is now one part of a complex system that includes sites in Puerto Rico, England, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan and Yakima, Wash.

One of the report's authors wrote that the system "flagrantly infringes the freedoms enjoyed by European citizens."

At the same time, experts noted that the system wasn't nearly as exhaustive as some thought because a large amount of overseas communications still use cables, and not satellites. Also, the sheer volume of phone calls and e-mails makes it virtually impossible to monitor large numbers of people at one time.

Meanwhile, inside U.S. borders, the system has mostly escaped such scrutiny.

That's especially true in Sugar Grove, where the Navy base supplies about 200 jobs and customers for local businesses.

Homan, now 78, remained a civilian Navy contractor and helped build some of the dishes -- including a 60-footer and a 150-footer -- before an injury sent him to a second career delivering milk. He said he believes that U.S. government should be doing everything it can to protect itself -- even if it means spying on Americans' phone and e-mail conversations.

"I think we should," he said. "You get information that you wouldn't get otherwise ... you've got to know."

Legal or illegal?

The rest of the country got an earful in December, when The New York Times published two articles with sources who said the system was being used to spy on Americans without a court order.

Reporter James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA, wrote in the Times that NIOC Sugar Grove was tied to domestic spying.

Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed by Congress in the wake of Watergate, investigators can eavesdrop on American citizens only after receiving a court order.

Over the past two months, President Bush has admitted to skirting FISA -- a move that members of both parties on Capitol Hill challenge. Republican and Democratic leadership immediately called for hearings into the matter.

The pressure continued to mount in January, when the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed federal lawsuits accusing Bush of exceeding his constitutional powers.

But Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claim that the eavesdropping is well within the president's powers. The White House maintains that only overseas communications with those believed to be al-Qaida activists were targeted when the new eavesdropping initiative began in 2002.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., is looking forward to seeing what comes out of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings that begin Monday.

Despite serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee and as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Warner was not one of the key members of Capitol Hill briefed by the White House on the domestic spying program before it hit the media, according to his spokesman.

"The senator believes we live in a country where no one is above the law -- and that includes senators and presidents," said John Ullyot. "He believes that it is appropriate that the matter be looked into by the appropriate people."

At issue, said Robert Turner, co-founder and associate director of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, is whether the government should be listening to foreign terrorists making contact with people inside the United States and what the Constitution has to say about it.

In both cases, Turner said he expects President Bush will win.

"The Fourth Amendment doesn't prohibit government eavesdropping. What it does is protect us from unreasonable search and seizure," he said.

And we are at war. Even President Abraham Lincoln authorized tapping telegraph wires during the Civil War and in the process probably listened to all sorts of conversations, Turner said.

"The idea that Joe's right to privacy is more important than the right to life for thousands of people doesn't pass the straight face test," he said.

Blacksburg lawyer Joe Painter, who has expertise in constitutional law, said he believes that the government would overstep its authority only if it started keeping profiles on people.

"You've got to balance the general welfare with being blown up," said Painter, pointing out that since the eavesdropping initiative started in 2002, there have been no more terrorist attacks in the United States.

Residents unconcerned

While the rest of the country debates domestic spying, the people of Sugar Grove just listen.

In a state full of hollows and coal mines, this town is even more removed from the "real" world. Because of the satellite dishes, cellphone service and radio reception are spotty at best.

Sugar Grove is little more than a crossroads. Two general stores, a church, a couple of historic homes and an abandoned mill make up "downtown." There is no stoplight.

Bowers Store is also the post office.

Everybody in town -- population 23, including his dog, according to Bowers -- comes here to chew the fat.

On really slow days at the store, Bowers naps between customers. Other days, he is kept company by some of the men in town, many of whom work at the base.

Bowers doesn't ask specifics about what they do.

"I don't want to know," he said.

But if you ask nicely, they'll dig out pictures that everyone seems to have of the satellite dishes taken from the highway leading to the top of nearby Reddish Knob in Virginia, the only public road from which you can see them.

To the locals, living near the base is as normal as living near the Appalachian Trail or the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Much of the base is open to the public. Residents are willing to endure vehicle searches and driver's license checks for the $2.50 all-you-can-eat breakfast at the Galley or to see the Tuesday night movie at the Robert C. Byrd Community Center. This week, it's "The Perfect Man."

But access to the satellite dishes beyond a ridge is limited by concrete barricades and a strict checkpoint that requires clearance.

Only a select few of the 200 employees -- 75 percent of whom are civilians -- are allowed underground to where the real work happens.

Everyone from Sugar Grove to the Pendleton County seat of Franklin to the nearby town of Brandywine seems to have some idea what goes on at the base, though no one really wants to elaborate.

"They can't really talk about it much," said Ronnie Kimble, owner of Fox's Pizza in Brandywine for the past 14 years.

"I know most of it is underground -- satellite communications, spying on other countries."

Kimble hasn't gotten caught up in the recent fervor over domestic spying.

"It wouldn't bother me. I don't talk on the phone," he said. "They could listen to my wife all day and all night, but they wouldn't learn anything."

The only thing that concerns him is the lack of cellphone coverage in the area.

Initially, there were other concerns.

Some in the 1950s worried that the town would grow.

Others thought the base would become a target for international warfare. Some residents even went as far as building bomb shelters, according to Bowers. So far, no attacks.

But 50 years after the satellites started to go up, many in town say the base is a nonfactor.

Jim Hoffman, a retired ironworker who had held jobs in 41 states, moved his family to Sugar Grove in 1982 after spending years -- and too many Thanksgiving holidays, his wife complained -- hunting deer in the community's rocky and wooded hillsides.

"I pay no attention to that base," he said.

But he does have a plan just in case the military presence at Sugar Grove draws international attention -- and not the good kind.

"I always figured if they said that was ground zero, I'd just go get me a fifth of whiskey and go sit on the front porch," Hoffman said.