Spy Court's Orders Stir Debate on Hill

Gonzales's remarks at the Judiciary Committee prompted a testy exchange with Leahy.

"Are you saying that you might object to the court giving us decisions that you've publicly announced?" Leahy asked. "Are we a little Alice in Wonderland here?"

"I'm not saying that I have objections to it being released. What I'm saying is it's not my decision to make," Gonzales responded. He added later: "There is going to be information about operational details about how we're doing this that we want to keep confidential."

Several senators also sharply questioned why it took nearly two years for the Justice Department to come up with a surveillance plan that was acceptable to the secret court.

"It is a little hard to see why it took so long," said Specter, who unsuccessfully attempted to shepherd legislation through Congress last year that would have allowed the administration to seek the court's approval for the spying. "The heavy criticism the president took on the program was very harmful in the political process and for the reputation of the country."

Gonzales argued that disclosing even the basic outlines of the program would reveal vital intelligence sources and methods to terrorist groups. He also defended the time it took for Justice lawyers to devise a plan that would pass court muster.

"This is a very complicated application," Gonzales said. "It's not something you just pull off the shelf."

Gonzales said the program adheres to FISA and that "minimization" procedures to destroy unneeded data go "above and beyond" what is required in a typical FISA case.

Gonzales said Justice Department lawyers began exploring ways to use the surveillance law for the NSA program shortly after he became attorney general in early 2005.

Another source said the department had informally floated a proposal to Kollar-Kotelly in recent months about how to resolve concerns among the intelligence court's judges that information gleaned from the president's surveillance program might taint the court's warrant process.

Kollar-Kotelly raised the same point with top Justice officials in 2005, when she was briefed on the president's domestic spying program, according to several officials familiar with the FISA process. The judge did not consider it her place to determine whether the program was constitutional, but she was very disturbed by the risk that information gleaned from warrantless wiretaps could be used in warrant applications without the court's knowledge.

Staff writers Carol D. Leonnig and Walter Pincus contributed to this report.