WASHINGTON — The nation's top intelligence official has confirmed that a federal court did rule the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program was in violation of the law, prompting the mad rush in Congress this month to overhaul key espionage provisions.
In an interview with a Texas newspaper, Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell also disclosed that the number of people in the United States who are under surveillance by the nation's spy services is "100 or less," a figure he said showed that the government was not engaged in widespread spying on Americans.
His comments represent an exceedingly rare public description of one of the nation's most closely guarded and controversial espionage operations. Many of the details he described -- such as the deliberations of the special intelligence court and the scope of the surveillance operation -- are usually considered classified.
McConnell was interviewed by the El Paso Times after addressing a border security conference in the city Aug. 14. On Wednesday, the newspaper posted a transcript of the interview on its website at www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_6685679.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's adverse ruling earlier this year delivered a major blow to U.S. spying operations, McConnell said, even as intelligence analysts were expressing growing alarm that the Al Qaeda terrorist network was regrouping.
"We found ourselves in a position of actually losing ground," he said.
McConnell said the ruling came during a routine review of the program by the court, commonly known as the FISA court because it was created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Initially, he said, one of the judges on the 11-member panel supported the government's position and ruled that individual warrants were not needed to intercept communication between two people overseas whose e-mails or calls happened to travel through data networks inside the United States.
But in a subsequent review, a second judge took a different position.
"The second judge looked at the same data and said, 'Well, wait a minute. I interpret the law, which is the FISA law, differently,' " McConnell said.
The decision meant that the government had to get a court order to trace calls or e-mails that traveled on networks inside the United States, even if the parties at both ends were overseas.
