The inspectors general concluded that, even though Congress has adopted changes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legalizing some of the activities, the information they produce "should be carefully monitored."
The report also provided a comprehensive and official narrative concerning the selective and often confrontational way in which the Bush administration sought and procured legal authorization for its post-Sept. 11 programs.
Eventually, the surveillance program and the Justice Department's role in it were so controversial that the deputy attorney general, James B. Comey, and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III both threatened to resign in 2004 because they believed the program was illegal.
The dispute resulted in an infamous showdown that year in the hospital room of then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, when Comey raced up the hospital steps to prevent White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. from persuading the heavily medicated attorney general to sign off on an extension of the program.
Legal experts and lawmakers said the latest findings raised disturbing questions about the actions of the Bush administration and pointed to the need for ways to hold participants accountable.
"I am glad the American people can finally see for themselves what happens when a handful of senior officials -- who think they know better than the courts, the U.S. Justice Department and Congress -- decide to rewrite the law in secret," said Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). "This report allows the American people to see how senior Bush administration officials concocted the program first and came up with its creative legal justifications later."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said the report added a sense of urgency to establishing a nonpartisan "commission of inquiry" to probe Bush administration programs. President Obama opposes such a commission.
A former Bush administration official who participated in the program said the inspectors' report failed to take into account that the Justice Department and the White House at the time consistently argued that the president "has authority to conduct electronic surveillance to protect the national security from foreign threats, independent of Congress."
Speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political and legal sensitivity, the official said the programs resulted from concerns in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
