WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Wednesday he will turn over secret documents detailing the government's domestic spying program, ending a two-week standoff with the Senate Judiciary Committee over surveillance targeting terror suspects.``It's never been the case where we said we would never provide access,'' Gonzales told reporters. ``We obviously would be concerned about the public disclosure that may jeopardize the national security of our country,'' he said. ``But we're working with the Congress to provide the information that it needs.''
The documents held by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - including investigators' applications for permission to spy and judges' orders - will be given to some lawmakers as early as Wednesday. Gonzales said the documents would not be released publicly. ``We're talking about highly classified documents about highly classified activities of the United States government,'' the attorney general said.
| Don't worry, the NYT will have them by Saturday just in time for the big Sunday paper. |
The documents also will be available to lawmakers and staffers on the House and Senate intelligence committees. These people already were cleared to receive details about the controversial spy program.
| Including all the ones who routinely leak to the NYT. |
``They will not be made public until I've had a chance to see them,'' Specter said.
| And they shouldn't be made public after that, you dolt. |
The documents are being turned over two weeks after a testy Senate hearing, during which lawmakers hammered Gonzales for refusing to provide details about the court's new oversight - and whether it provides adequate privacy protections.
President Bush secretly authorized the spying program after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, allowing the National Security Agency to bypass court review and conduct domestic surveillance of people suspected of links to terrorism. The program, which a federal judge last August declared unconstitutional, ...
| ... which an Appeals Court put on hold ... |
On Jan. 17, the day before the Senate hearing, Gonzales announced that the FISA Court had assumed oversight authority of the surveillance program a week earlier, and had already approved at least one warrant targeting a person suspected of having terror ties.
Senators demanded to know more about how judges on the secret court might consider evidence when approving government requests to spy on people in the United States. And FISA Court Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, in a letter released at the hearing, said she had no objection to giving lawmakers copies of orders and opinions relating to the secret panel's oversight of the spy program.
| Yup, let's just request permission from al-Qaeda to monitor their communications. |