In his first public comments on a controversy that erupted in July, former State Police Superintendent Tim Hutchins strongly defended the undercover surveillance of protest groups by officers under his command. But he told the state Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee that the police had been “wrong” to enter the names of 53 members of the groups as “terrorists” in a federal criminal database.

Hutchins also said he never discussed the 15-month operation that began in 2005 with then-Gov. Robert Ehrlich, and Ehrlich gave him no guidance about investigating groups. Hutchins ordered the surveillance stopped in 2006.