White House Secrecy On Wiretaps Described

No more than four Justice Department officials had access to details of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program when the department deemed portions of it illegal, following a pattern of poor consultation that helped create a "legal mess," a former Justice official told Congress yesterday.

Jack L. Goldsmith, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the White House so tightly restricted access to the National Security Agency's program that even the attorney general and the NSA's general counsel were partly in the dark.

When the Justice Department began a formal review of the program's legal underpinnings in late 2003, the White House initially resisted allowing then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey to be briefed on it, Goldsmith said.

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Goldsmith also appeared to challenge previous testimony from Gonzales, who repeatedly told lawmakers that there had been no serious disagreement within the administration over the Terrorist Surveillance Program, the public name for the NSA's warrantless surveillance efforts. Gonzales left office last month.

"There were enormous disagreements" about the program, Goldsmith said. But he added that Gonzales's explanations could be seen as technically accurate given the varying terminology used for the program.

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