WP
The White House agreed yesterday to give Senate intelligence committee members and staff access to internal documents related to its domestic surveillance program in a bid to win Democratic lawmakers' support for the administration's version of an intelligence measure.
The move was meant in part to defuse a months-long clash between Congress and the Bush administration over access to legal memoranda and presidential decisions underpinning the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which allowed the government to eavesdrop without court warrants on communications between people in the United States and abroad when one of the parties is a terrorism-related suspect.
Some of the documents had been demanded by Senate Judiciary Committee members as a condition for considering the administration's nomination of former judge Michael B. Mukasey as the nation's 81st attorney general. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee's chairman, dropped that condition weeks ago but said yesterday that he still wants to see the documents.
Leahy told reporters after a meeting with Mukasey yesterday that he nonetheless expects Mukasey "to be confirmed" after a nomination hearing today, at which Mukasey is to be escorted into the room by Leahy and the committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.). Mukasey is to be formally introduced by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
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