The US Justice Department has launched an investigation into how its lawyers handled requests for warrantless wiretap authority as part of a controversial domestic surveillance program approved by President George W. Bush.

The probe, announced in a letter by department legal counsel Marshall Jarrett to Democratic US Representative Maurice Hinchey, came amid a growing drumbeat of demands for a formal investigation of the program, under which the National Security Agency was allowed to intercept communications by Americans allegedly suspected of contacts with Al-Qaeda.

Though it falls short of these demands, the probe marks the first time the administration has agreed to re-examine its own rulings on the legal foundation of such surveillance.

In his letter made public Wednesday, Jarrett wrote that the investigation would focus on "the Department of Justice's role in authorizing, approving and auditing" the NSA's surveillance activities "and whether such activities are permissible under existing law."

The controversy erupted last December, after the New York Times reported that Bush had repeatedly authorized the NSA to monitor overseas telephone calls and email traffic to and from people living in the United States without requisite permission from a secret court.

Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the government can conduct such surveillance only for 72 hours as it seeks a warrant for continued monitoring.

Responding to an avalanche of criticism, the Justice Department put forward a new legal doctrine, under which Bush can authorize warrantless wiretaps on the basis of his inherent constitutional powers as commander-in-chief as well as a resolution passed by Congress in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The measure, which was adopted three days after the strikes, allows the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force" against those involved in them, but contains no specific language on surveillance.

Congressional critics, including many Republicans, blasted the theory, saying that since wiretapping was specifically addressed in the 1978 law, ordering domestic surveillance without a court order was in all probability illegal.

Hinchey welcomed the probe that will be conducted by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

"What we've seen is a stubborn president who has refused to acknowledge that he went above the law, and hopefully this investigation will finally make him realize that he is wrong," the congressman said in a statement.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is conducting hearings in a bid to determine the legality of the wiretaps.

The committee plans to summon former attorney general John Ashcroft as well as his former deputy, James Comey, both of whom are reported to have taken strong issue with the wiretap program.

But in remarks made public Thursday, the current attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, indicated the administration planned to sharply limit what these former officials would be allowed to disclose.

"Clearly, there are privilege issues that have to be considered," Gonzales told The Washington Post in an interview. "As a general matter, we would not be disclosing internal deliberations, internal recommendations."

Anticipating a new battle, Democratic Senator Joe Biden on Wednesday urged the Senate Intelligence Committee to open a formal investigation into the wiretapping program.

He said the panel should ask how decisions are made on who will be targeted by surveillance, how many terrorists or collaborators have been identified through the program, and how many arrests have been made.

"The White House continues to tell Congress and the American people that we are not entitled to those facts," Biden said. "That is unacceptable."

Neither could he brief the inspector general of the NSA because that office is not cleared to hear the information, he said.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said they believe a few members of the Armed Services Committee are cleared for the information, but they said believe their committee and the intelligence committees have jurisdiction to hear the allegations.

"Congressman Kucinich wants Congressman Shays to hold a hearing (on the program)," said Doug Gordon, Kucinich's spokesman. "Obviously it would have to take place in some kind of a closed hearing. But Congress has a role to play in oversight. The (Bush) administration does not get to decide what Congress can and can not hear."

Tice was testifying because he was a National Security Agency intelligence officer who was stripped of his security clearance after he reported his suspicions that a former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency was a spy. The matter was dismissed by the DIA, but Tice pressed it later and was subsequently ordered to take a psychological examination, during which he was declared paranoid. He is now unemployed.

Tice was one of the New York Times sources for its wiretapping story, but he told the committee the information he provided was not secret and could have been provided by an private sector electronic communications professional.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Last month, U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish sided with prosecutors in ruling that the defense lawyers should not have had access to the materials. The lawyers have been cleared to view documents classified as secret for purposes of preparing their defense, but they may not share the information with the defendants or anyone else.

The case against the now-defunct Muslim charity is built in part on wiretaps, informants and information provided by Israel, according to court documents.

The government intended to turn over intercepted communications in Arabic and summaries of written translations involving three people or organizations that were subject to orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The 16 boxes of classified information also contained "FISA applications, orders and other related material that should not have been provided to defense counsel," Assistant U.S. Attorney James Jacks wrote in a filing asking for the return of the documents.

Officials blamed the mistake on an unnamed FBI agent and clerical staff who were called in to help copy files because prosecutors and agents familiar with the case were involved in another trial.

Jacks, in a brief conversation with The Associated Press Thursday, declined to comment on the case, pointing instead to the government's numerous filings.

When prosecutors and FBI agents in August realized what had transpired, Jacks unsuccessfully sought access to the room in the courthouse that serves as an office for the defense lawyers in the case.

A few days later, Jacks went to the room and demanded to know what the defense lawyers were doing, Nancy Hollander, a member of the defense team, wrote Judge Fish in August.

The judge ordered the room sealed.

Both government and defense lawyers are barred from discussing exactly what was turned over, but defense lawyers have indicated they believe the information would help their case.

The emails Gonzales is said to be withholding contained references to Valerie Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status and developments related to the inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Moreover, according to sources, the emails contained suggestions by the officials on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments Joseph Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.

Gonzales, who at the time of the leak was the White House counsel, spent two weeks with other White House attorneys screening emails turned over to his office by roughly 2,000 staffers following a deadline imposed by the White House in 2003. The sources said Gonzales told Fitzgerald more than a year ago that he did not intend to turn over the emails to his office, because they contained classified intelligence information about Iraq in addition to minor references to Plame Wilson, the sources said.

He is said to have cited "executive privilege" and "national security concerns" as the reason for not turning over some of the correspondence, which allegedly proves Cheney's office played an active role in leaking Plame Wilson's undercover CIA status to reporters, the attorneys said.

Aside from the emails that have not been turned over, there are also emails that Patrick Fitzgerald, the Special Prosecutor investigating the case, believes were either "shredded" or deleted, the attorneys said.

In a court document dated January 23, Fitzgerald says that, during the course of his investigation, he had been told that some emails from the offices of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had not been saved. His letter does not claim that any member of the Bush administration discarded the emails, but sources close to the probe say that is what Fitzgerald has been alleging privately.

"In an abundance of caution," Fitzgerald's January 23 letter to Libby's defense team states, "we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system."

Spokespeople for Gonzales and the White House would not comment citing the ongoing investigation. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Fitzgerald, also wouldn't comment. A spokesman for Cheney did not return calls for comment nor did Cheney's criminal attorney, Terrence O'Donnell.

Cheney testified for a little more than an hour about his role in the leak in early 2004. What he told prosecutors appears to be identical to testimony his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, gave before a grand jury during the same year. Libby was indicted on five-counts of obstruction of justice, perjury, and lying to investigators related to his role in the Plame Wilson leak.

Two weeks ago, additional court documents related to Libby's case were made public. In one document, Fitzgerald responded to Libby's defense team that Libby had testified before a grand jury that his "superiors" authorized him to leak elements of the highly classified National Intelligence Estimate to reporters in the summer of 2003 that showed Iraq to be a grave nuclear threat, to rebut criticism that the administration manipulated pre-war Iraq intelligence.

News reports citing people familiar with Libby's testimony said Cheney had authorized Libby to do so. Additionally, an extensive investigation during the past month has shown that Cheney, Libby and former Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley spearhead an effort beginning in March 2003 to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the administration's intelligence related to Iraq, who had publicly criticized the administration for relying on forged documents to build public support for the war.

Cheney did not disclose this information when he was questioned by investigators.

Cheney responded to questions about how the White House came to rely on Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country. Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing on the allegations in late December 2003 or early January 2004 and had asked the CIA for more information about the issue.

Cheney said he was unaware that Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to look into the uranium claims and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a CIA analyst upon his return, which stated that the Niger claims were untrue. He said the CIA never told him about Wilson's trip.

However, these attorneys said that witnesses in the case have testified before a grand jury that Cheney, Libby, Hadley, the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Justice Department, the FBI, and other senior aides in the Office of the Vice President, the President, and the National Security Council had received and read a March 9, 2002, cable sent to his office by the CIA that debunked the Niger claims.

The cable, which was prepared by a CIA analyst and based on Wilson's fact-finding mission, did not mention Wilson by name, but quoted a CIA source and Niger officials Wilson had questioned during his eight-day mission, who said there was no truth to the claims that Iraq had tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium ore from Niger.

Several current and former State Department and CIA officials familiar with the March 9, 2002, cable said they had testified before the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson leak that they had spoken to Libby and Hadley about the cable, and that they were told Cheney had also read it.

Cheney told investigators that when Wilson began speaking to reporters on background about his secret mission to Niger to investigate Iraq's alleged attempts to purchase uranium, he asked Libby to contact the CIA to "get more information" about the trip and to find out if it was true, the attorneys added.

Furthermore, Cheney told prosecutors that before he learned of Wilson's trip, his office simply sought to rebut statements made by Wilson to reporters and the various newspaper reports that said the Bush administration knowingly relied on flawed intelligence to build a case for war.

Moreover, Cheney said that he and his aide were concerned that reporters had been under the impression that Cheney chose Wilson for the Niger trip, the attorneys said. Cheney testified that he instructed Libby and other aides to coordinate a response to those queries and rebut those allegations with the White House press office.

"In his testimony the vice president said that his staff referred media calls about Wilson to the White House press office," one attorney close to the case said. "He said that was the appropriate venue for responding to statements by Mr. Wilson that he believed were wrong."

Cheney told investigators that he first learned about Valerie Plame Wilson and her employment with the CIA from Libby. Cheney testified that Libby told him that several reporters had contacted him in July to say that Plame Wilson had been responsible for arranging her husband's trip to Niger to investigate the Niger uranium claims.

Cheney also testified that the next time he recalled hearing about Plame Wilson and her connection to Joseph Wilson was when he read about her in a July 14, 2003, column written by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak investigation, and is a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.

Just in case you have forgotten: Last year, a grand jury led by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury related to the leaking of the identity of an undercover officer working for the CIA. Libby's trial, originally scheduled to begin Feb. 3, has been postponed until January 2007, after the November elections.

Last week, the National Journal reported that court papers in the case reveal that Libby testified before a federal grand jury that he was "authorized to disclose" - that is, to leak - highly classified intelligence information to the press "by his superiors." The evidence is a Jan. 23 letter from the prosecutor responding to Libby's lawyers, who asked what information the government will make available to the defense.

Congress, which has the duty under our system of government to watch and check the government, gets information in dribs and drabs - or not at all - at the whim of the president. The administration sends people up to Congress who wax eloquently about "inherent" presidential authority. In short, Americans are simply expected to have faith that the president is exercising powers constitutionally, legally and appropriately without accountability to Congress and the courts. Just to make sure of that faith, administration officials also try to scare people by saying that oversight would somehow harm efforts to combat terrorism.

You might think the president would want Congress as a partner in the worldwide struggle against terrorism. Yet this president acts as if he and the executive branch are the only ones who care about protecting Americans - that they alone decide what is in the national interest and that Congress somehow is an impediment. The Libby testimony underlines that. It also reveals in stark terms an administration more concerned with gaining and maintaining power than building common cause to protect national security.