GOP Chair, W. House Agree On Spy 'Fix'

Democrats Demanding Broader Probe Of Wiretap Program

(CBS/AP)  DeWine's proposal would exempt Mr. Bush's program from FISA. That law set up a special court to approve warrants for monitoring inside the United States for national security investigations.

Yet Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., left the closed hearing saying he has been working on a different legislative change to FISA. "It seems that's a logical place to start, to upgrade FISA given the extraordinary expanse of technology in the 30 years that have lapsed," he said.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told a forum at Georgetown University Law School Thursday night, "You cannot have domestic search and seizure without a warrant." He is drafting legislation to require the foreign surveillance court to review the program and determine if it is constitutional.

California Rep. Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Georgetown audience the surveillance "can and must comply" with the law requiring warrants from the special court. However, she supported the need to conduct electronic eavesdropping to combat terrorism.

Specter's committee will continue to probe the program's legality at a Feb. 28 hearing. The Justice Department strongly discouraged him from calling former Attorney General John Ashcroft and his deputy, James Comey, to testify about the surveillance program.

Just as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could not talk about the administration's internal deliberations when he appeared before the committee earlier this month, neither can Ashcroft nor Comey, Assistant Attorney General William Moschella said in a letter to Specter.

In his ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy found that a private group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, will suffer irreparable harm if the documents it has been seeking since December are not processed promptly under the Freedom of Information Act. He gave the Justice Department 20 days to respond to the group's request.

"President Bush has invited meaningful debate about the wireless surveillance program," Kennedy said. "That can only occur if DOJ processes its FOIA requests in a timely fashion and releases the information sought."

Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said the department has been "extremely forthcoming" with information and "will continue to meet its obligations under FOIA."

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen says that while this is a victory for the plaintiffs, it is by no means a major ruling that will instantly lift the lid of secrecy from the spying program.

"The judge didn't order the feds to suddenly release all sorts of classified or secret information. All the judge did was to tell the Justice Department that it has to speed up its response to a request for information about the National Security Agency program," said Cohen. "And the information that initially will be released will be very unspecific. The big battles are yet to come over how much of this stuff eventually is made public."