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White House gives Congress more details on spy program

By wire services
Published February 9, 2006

WASHINGTON - After weeks of insisting it would not reveal details of its eavesdropping without warrants, the White House reversed course Wednesday and provided a House committee with highly classified information about the operations.

The White House has been under pressure from lawmakers who wanted more information about the National Security Agency's monitoring. Both Democrats and Republicans rejected the administration's suggestion that they could not be trusted with national security secrets.

The shift came after Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., chairwoman of a House intelligence subcommittee that oversees the NSA, broke with the Bush administration and called for a full review of the NSA's program, along with legislative action to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Wilson and others also called for the full House Intelligence Committee to be briefed on the program's operational details. Although the White House initially promised only information about the legal rationale for surveillance, administration officials broadened the scope Wednesday to include more sensitive details about how the program works.

"I think we've had a tremendous impact today," Wilson said at a news conference as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Gen. Michael Hayden, the nation's No. 2 intelligence official, briefed the full Intelligence Committee.

"I don't think the White House would have made the decision that it did had I not stood up and said, "You must brief the Intelligence Committee,' " she said.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the administration stated "from the beginning that we will work with members of Congress, and we will continue to do so regarding this vital national security program."

At least one Democrat left the four-hour House session saying he had a better understanding of legal and operational aspects of the antiterrorist surveillance program, being conducted without warrants.

"It's a different program than I was beginning to let myself believe," said Alabama Rep. Bud Cramer, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee's oversight subcommittee.

"This may be a valuable program," Cramer said. He said he didn't know if it was legal, but said: "My direction of thinking was changed tremendously."

Lawmakers leaving the briefing said it covered the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Justice Department papers outlining legal justifications for the operations, limited details on success stories and some highly sensitive details.

The White House has insisted that it has the legal authority to monitor terror-related international communications in cases in which one party to the call is in the United States.

White House officials have said President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were within the law when they chose to brief only the eight lawmakers who lead the House and Senate and its intelligence committees.

In a PBS interview Tuesday, Cheney said that if all 70 members of the House and Senate intelligence committees were briefed over the program's four years, "it's not a good way to keep a secret."

House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., one of the eight fully briefed, said he knows more about the program than the rest of the committee. But, he said, "there is very little left to the imagination" of those members who attended the briefing.

Said California Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the panel's top Democrat: "The ice is melting, and we are making progress."

Harman said she supports the program, but said she is uncomfortable with the administration's legal justification. Harman said the administration should have used the court processes set up under the FISA law and gotten warrants.

Despite Wednesday's briefings, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he plans to draft a bill that would "require the administration to take the program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court." The court was established to handle Justice Department requests for warrants to monitor communications of terrorism and espionage suspects.

Information from the Associated Press and Washington Post was used in this report.

[Last modified February 9, 2006, 01:31:52]