WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 surveillance efforts went beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program, a government report disclosed Friday, encompassing additional secretive activities that created "unprecedented" spying powers.
The report also raised new questions about how the Bush White House kept key Justice Department officials in the dark as it launched the surveillance program.
In a move that it described as "extraordinary and inappropriate," the report said the White House relied on a single, lower-level attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for assessments about the programs' legality.
The attorney, John Yoo, a young George W. Bush appointee with close ties to the president's inner circle, wrote a series of memos legally blessing the program even though his superiors and most top officials were uninformed about it.
The report was compiled at the request of Congress by five government agency watchdogs: the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, Directorate of National Intelligence and National Security Agency.
It represents the most detailed public disclosure of the existence of secret surveillance efforts beyond the warrantless wiretapping program, saying the overall package of efforts came to be known in the Bush administration as the "President's Surveillance Program."
However, the report did not describe the other programs or explain how they worked.
"All of these activities were authorized in a single presidential authorization," the report said, referring to the warrantless wiretapping as a "terrorist surveillance program" and the undisclosed efforts as "other intelligence activities."
"The specific details of the other intelligence activities remain highly classified," the report said.
The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 top officials and front-line agents in defense and intelligence agencies, and said views of the effectiveness of the warrantless wiretapping and other still- secret activities were mixed.
While many agents thought the efforts filled a gap in intelligence efforts, others "had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the President's Surveillance Program to counter-terrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many."
