[Infowarrior] - White House to Give Senate Panel Surveillance Program Documents

[Richard Forno]

White House to Give Senate Panel Surveillance Program Documents

By Ellen Nakashima and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer and washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 17, 2007; A04

The White House agreed yesterday to give Senate intelligence committee
members and staff access to internal documents related to its domestic
surveillance program in a bid to win Democratic lawmakers' support for the
administration's version of an intelligence measure.

The move was meant in part to defuse a months-long clash between Congress
and the Bush administration over access to legal memoranda and presidential
decisions underpinning the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which allowed the
government to eavesdrop without court warrants on communications between
people in the United States and abroad when one of the parties is a
terrorism-related suspect.

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Besides trying to quiet congressional accusations of a coverup, the
administration wants in particular to win support for a legal provision
providing immunity for telecommunications companies that have been sued for
violating privacy rights when they assisted the government's domestic
surveillance effort.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that administration officials
"routinely meet with members of Congress and their staffs to provide them
with information they need when they are considering and drafting
legislation." In this case, he said, members of the Senate intelligence
panel "requested access to certain materials to assist their consideration"
of relief for the companies.