Judge orders Bush to release details about eavesdropping

WASHINGTON — A federal judge ordered the Bush administration on Thursday to release documents about its warrantless surveillance program or spell out what it is withholding, a setback to efforts to keep the program under wraps.

At the same time, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said he had worked out an agreement with the White House to consider legislation and provide more information to Congress on the eavesdropping program. The panel's top Democrat, who has requested a full-scale investigation, immediately objected to what he called an abdication of the committee's responsibilities.

Also Thursday, leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said they had agreed to open a congressional inquiry into the domestic surveillance program, although the panel's GOP members disagreed on its scope.

Rep. Heather A. Wilson, R-N.M., the committee member who called for the investigation last week, said the review "will have multiple avenues, because we want to completely understand the program and move forward."

However, an aide to Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., who leads the committee, said the inquiry would be much more limited in scope, focusing on whether federal surveillance laws need to be changed and not on the eavesdropping program itself.

Regarding Thursday's court order, U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ruled 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."

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers also have been seeking more information about Bush's program that allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop — without court warrants — on Americans whose international calls and e-mails it believed might be linked to al-Qaida.