WASHINGTON – Switching course on one of his most controversial anti-terrorism policies, President Bush agreed Thursday to submit the administration’s warrantless surveillance program to a court for constitutional review.
A deal negotiated between the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., came with conditions. Bush is insisting that Congress first give him new leeway in some areas of surveillance and that all lawsuits challenging his eavesdropping policy be funneled to a Washington-based intelligence court that operates in secret.
Even so, the accord is a reversal of Bush’s position that he would not submit his program to court review. The administration has contended that the executive branch already has the wartime authority it needs to order the National Security Agency to monitor e-mails and telephone calls between the United States and foreign countries when at least one party is suspected of terrorist ties.
Specter has disputed that assertion, and many Democrats and civil liberties groups responded with outrage after the surveillance program was disclosed in news accounts last winter.
Bush agreed voluntarily to submit his program to the court named for the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, contingent on Congress passing legislation drafted by Specter and administration lawyers.
The legislation would allow the Justice Department unlimited attempts to revise the program to meet the court’s approval and would allow it to appeal adverse court rulings. It would also allow the government to send to the FISA court all lawsuits challenging the program’s legality that are filed by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and are pending in federal courts.
Thursday’s agreement is the latest in a series of concessions Bush has made in his hard-line anti-terrorism tactics in recent days. On Tuesday, the administration agreed to apply key provisions of the Geneva Conventions to all terrorism suspects in U.S. custody.
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