WASHINGTON — A day after announcing that it had scrubbed a controversial warrantless surveillance program, the Bush administration refused to provide details to Congress of how a new court-review process for terror-related wiretaps would work, triggering a fresh round of complaints and suspicions from Democrats about what the administration was doing.
At the same time, President Bush and other administration officials indicated that little had changed in the electronic eavesdropping program, originally launched after the Sept. 11 attacks, other than the fact that a court had finally blessed it.
Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales revealed Wednesday that the secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to supervise wiretaps approved orders authorizing the surveillance last week.
Bush said the approval vindicated his position that he was justified in launching the surveillance. "Nothing has changed in the program except the court has said we've analyzed it and it's a legitimate way to protect the country," Bush said in an interview with Tribune Broadcasting.
Pressed during a hearing Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said the administration had changed the legal justification for the surveillance program but not the essential elements of the operation.
Disputing the suggestion that the warrantless program, run by the National Security Agency, had been "terminated," Gonzales said, "It took us a period of time to develop what we thought would be an acceptable legal argument that would be acceptable to the FISA court."
When asked to explain the legal argument, Gonzales refused. "I don't want to get into a public discussion about the deliberations and work of the court," he said.
The surveillance issue has become the first major battlefront between the new Congress and an administration that Democrats consider overly secretive and reluctant to share power.
With Gonzales and other officials mum about the program's details, Democrats refused to accept their assurances. It was not immediately clear how that stalemate might be resolved. The administration supplied classified briefings to several members of Congress, but lawmakers said they continued to have questions.
