U.S. side sought on ACLU request

A secret federal court has ordered the Bush administration to respond to an ACLU request that the court make public its rulings that approved the National Security Agency’s controversial Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The order was announced Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the request this month.

“This is an unprecedented request that warrants further briefing,” wrote Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. She ordered the government to respond to the ACLU’s request by month’s end.

The order was an indication, legal analysts say, that the court might be willing to entertain requests from the public to disclose information about nation- al security policies, as long as classified information is protected.

The spy court was created by a 1978 law that requires the government to obtain warrants in order to spy inside the United States. It is responsible for reviewing such requests.

Its rulings generally are made in complete secrecy, because the government presents classified information in its warrant applications.

But the ACLU argued in an Aug. 8 motion that the court’s decision in January to approve what had been a warrantless surveillance program -- monitoring communications into and out of the United States involving suspected terrorism affiliates -- represented a different type of warrant.

Because the warrant authorized a program rather than an individual search, the ACLU argued, it reinterpreted the 1978 surveillance law in a way that should be made public in declassified form.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the department was reviewing the court’s order.

The director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, Jameel Jaffer, said: “There’s no obvious national security reason why those kinds of legal arguments should remain secret.”

He said public disclosure was necessary for an informed debate about further changes to surveillance laws.

Congress recently approved a significant expansion of government surveillance powers, but that law expires in six months, and Democrats have vowed to make changes. Congress is expected to address the issue when it returns next month.

The White House has resisted public disclosure of the secret court’s January order. But administration officials have called it “innovative” and “complex.”