The White House, under political pressure, did agree to conduct a set of briefings for the two full committees earlier this year, but those sessions did not disclose operational details about the eavesdropping.

Initiated after the September 11 attacks, the program lets the National Security Agency eavesdrop without a court warrant on international phone calls and e-mails made by U.S. citizens if one party is suspected to have links with terrorism.

It has stirred an outcry among rights groups and lawmakers who believe Bush overstepped his constitutional authority.

The White House has sought to avoid full committee oversight by limiting briefings to subcommittees from each panel. Initially, the administration shared program details only with the chairmen and vice chairmen of the committees and party leaders in the House and Senate.

"It became apparent that in order to have a fully informed confirmation hearing, all members of my committee needed to know the full width and breadth of the president's program," Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, who heads the 15-member Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.

Democrats, who have long pushed for full hearings, said the change would bring the White House into compliance with the National Security Act of 1947, which requires the executive branch to keep Congress informed on intelligence matters.

"The White House, for the first time, is showing signs that they are serious about oversight," said Democrat Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the Senate panel's vice chairman.

A full Senate committee briefing was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Full oversight was expected to replace subcommittee reviews that have been in place since earlier this year, said committee staff members from both chambers.

CONFIRMATION HEARING

Hayden, who was the program's architect as NSA director from 1999 to 2005, was expected to face a blizzard of questions on NSA spying at a Thursday confirmation hearing before Roberts' committee. Republicans and Democrats have said Hayden's confirmation would depend on his answers would be.

A congressional aide who deals with intelligence matters said the change in policy on NSA oversight would allow Hayden to speak about the program during the classified segment of his confirmation hearing.

The aide predicted that broader oversight could also pave the way for bringing the program under federal law. Hayden has signaled possible support for this during meetings with members of Congress.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said full oversight would eliminate what he called politically driven rumors.

Bush has defended the program by saying the intelligence activities he authored are lawful and necessary to protect Americans from further harm.

A European Parliament probe concluded last month that more than 1,000 CIA flights had transited the EU and that the CIA had been responsible for kidnapping several people and illegally detaining them on EU soil.

However the inquiry, launched in January with no legal powers, has attracted little testimony from top-level officials. Lawmakers have accused national EU governments and institutions of wanting to sweep the affair under the carpet.

European rights watchdog the Council of Europe has said at least one European state admitted to its investigators that it had handed over terrorism suspects to foreign agents, but the body has so far been given no further details.

Washington denies any wrongdoing. State Department lawyer John Bellinger said this month there had been "very few" cases of what he called extraordinary renditions -- the transfer of terrorism suspects from one country to another.

A Washington Post report last year said the CIA had run secret prisons in Europe and flown suspects to states where they would have been tortured.

Human rights group Amnesty International said this month torture and inhumane treatment were "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere despite Washington's denials.

NSA JUST WANTS YOUR TELEPHONE RECORDS; CHOICE POINT WANTS YOUR DNA

GREG PALAST
BUZZFLASH

The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company, formed in 1997, called, Choice Point which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration.

Five years ago, I discovered that Choice Point had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.)

But Choice Point can collect if for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act ~ our domestic spying apparatchiks can then buy the info from Choice Point.

Choice Point's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information...

Choice Point, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States ...linked to all the other information held by CP" from medical to voting records. . .

The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that Choice Point was "the number one" provider of DNA info to the FBI.

"And that scares the hell out of me," said the executive (who has since left the company), because Choice Point gets it wrong so often. We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It's more like Austin Powers, Inc.

Besides the 97% error rate in finding Florida "felons," Illinois State Police fired the company after discovering Choice Point had produced test results on rape case evidence ... that didn't exist.

And Choice Point just got hit with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 credit card records.

Militarizing the border is a totally terrible idea. Do we have a State Department? Are they sentient? How much do you want to infuriate Mexico when it's sitting on quite a bit of oil? Bush knows what the most likely outcome of this move will be. He was governor during the political firestorm that ensued when a Marine taking part in anti-drug patrols on the border shot and killed Esequiel Hernandez, an innocent goat-herder from Redford, Texas.

That's the definition of crazy -- repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

I suppose politics could explain it, too. It's quite possible that lunacy and politics are closely related. It's still damned hard cheese for the Guard, though. The Guard is heavily deployed in Iraq, currently 20 percent of those serving, down from 40 percent last year. Some soldiers are sent back for multiple tours. Lt. Gen. James Helmly, head of the Army Reserve, said the Reserve is rapidly degenerating into "a broken force" and is "in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements."

Happy hurricane season to you, too. The Guard is also short on equipment and falling short on recruiting goals. But right-wingers are very unhappy with Bush right now, and this is a strong, red-meat gesture that will make them happy, even if it does nothing to shut down the border.

You want to shut down illegal immigration? You want to use the military as police? Make it illegal to hire undocumented workers and put the National Guard into enforcing that. Then rewrite NAFTA and invest in Mexico.

Meanwhile, further proof that the entire party is cuckoo comes to us with the passage of another $70 billion tax cut for the rich. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the average middle-income household will get a $20 tax cut, while those making more than $1 million a year will get nearly $42,000.

The Washington Post editorialized, "Budgetary dishonesty, distributional unfairness, fiscal irresponsibility -- by now the words are so familiar, it can be hard to appreciate how damaging this fiscal course will be."

Both President Bush and Veep Cheney are still going around claiming if you cut taxes, your tax revenues increase. No, they don't. Now we're just in whackoville. It's not true. Their own economists tell them it's not true, but they go about claiming it is with the same desperate tenacity they clung to false tales of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. How pathetic.

Speaking of lunacy, the saddest report from Iraq is that American soldiers showing signs of psychological distress and depression are being kept on active duty, increasing the risk of suicide. The Hartford Courant reports that even soldiers who have already been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome are kept on duty. This has led to an increase in the suicide rate -- 22 soldiers in 2005. And as I have reported before, the military is unprepared to deal with the flood of head cases coming back from Iraq. How many ways can we mistreat our own soldiers, while the right makes this elaborate show of devotion to "the troops"?

The consistent pattern that runs through all these problems is the failure to distinguish fantasy from reality. Mexican immigrants keep crossing the border because they can get jobs here -- and most of those jobs are provided by companies whose CEOs support George W. Bush. That's where he can have an impact on the problem, should he choose to do so.

The $70 billion tax cut is part of a continuing right-wing fantasy going back to the Laffer Curve. Of course, clinging to demonstrably false economic precepts is understandable when you benefit from them, but at some point reality does intervene.

As for the Iraq fantasy and those who pushed it on a reluctant country through lies, disinformation and bending intelligence -- isn't there a law against that?