Congress will get details on domestic spying

WASHINGTON — A two-week standoff over documents in the White House domestic-spying program ended Wednesday when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales agreed to turn over to Congress classified material about secret eavesdropping.

The Bush administration last month said it would put its surveillance of potential terrorist activities under supervision of a federal court but did not disclose details of its new eavesdropping program.

A key Senate panel, newly controlled by Democrats, demanded access to the records to gauge whether the administration was going too far or breaking any laws in tracking terrorism suspects.

The decision to share information with Congress was the latest concession by the Bush administration, which has argued it has the right to conduct its "war on terror" as it deems necessary and that secrecy is vital to national security.

Gonzales' decision came as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a lower-court ruling against the domestic-spying program, even though the White House had agreed a special court could monitor the eavesdropping.

A U.S. district court in August ruled the program violated the Constitution and a 1978 law prohibiting surveillance of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without the approval of the special court. The government appealed.

The documents that will be released to Congress, including applications for electronic wiretaps and orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, will be made available to congressional committees only and not released to the public.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said his panel would review the records before "deciding what further oversight or legislative action is necessary."

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, ranking Republican on the panel, had joined the Democrats in demanding the records be turned over. At a feisty hearing last month, he criticized Gonzales for his refusal to release the documents even though the FISA court's presiding judge had no objections.

On Wednesday, Specter said he might make the records public, as long as the materials do not violate privacy rules or jeopardize ongoing federal investigations.

In the appeals-court case, the ACLU's lead attorney argued that the group's challenge to the domestic-wiretapping program should not be dropped because the government had volunteered not to renew the warrantless-eavesdropping activities.

Saying the Bush administration was still claiming the "inherent authority" to engage in eavesdropping without a warrant, Ann Beeson told the three-judge panel "a failure to decide the case could leave it up to the president to decide when and whether to obey the law."

Material from Reuters is included in this report.