US:The Bush administration has abandoned a controversial programme that allowed the National Security Agency to spy on phone calls and e-mails without a court warrant and will now seek approval for such eavesdropping from a secret court.
Senators yesterday questioned attorney general Alberto Gonzales about the administration's abrupt reversal after months spent insisting that the spying programme was legal and necessary for national security.
President George Bush secretly authorised the programme in 2001 and defended it after the New York Times revealed its existence in 2005.
The administration claimed the president had the authority to order the wiretapping of phone calls and e-mails between American citizens and suspected terrorists outside the country.
The programme was denounced by Democrats and faced a number of court challenges. Mr Gonzales announced this week that from now on such wiretaps would have to be authorised by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a federal court that meets in secret.
Mr Gonzales told the senate judiciary committee yesterday that he may not be able to release details of an order the court made last week authorising a wiretap.
"There is going to be information about operational details about how we're doing this that we want to keep confidential," he said.
The decision to abandon the warrantless surveillance programme is the latest in a succession of retreats from the Bush administration's expansive interpretation of executive power.
During the past six months, Mr Bush has closed secret CIA prisons overseas and transferred secretly held detainees into regular military custody. He has negotiated congressional approval for tribunals to try inmates at Guantanamo Bay and agreed some limits to how harshly detainees can be interrogated.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy welcomed the latest move as a step that should have been taken years ago.
"In the 32 years since I first came to the Senate - and that was during the era of Watergate and Vietnam - I've never seen a time when their constitution and fundamental rights as Americans were more threatened, unfortunately, by our own government," he said.
Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the committee, demanded to know why it had taken so long to change the administration's policy, noting that Republicans had paid a heavy price for defending the surveillance programme.
"We lost a close election. I wouldn't want to get involved in what was cause-and-effect, but the heavy criticism which the president took on the programme, I think, was very harmful in the political process and for the reputation of the country," Mr Specter said.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes said Congress needed more details about the new surveillance programme before endorsing it.