NYT: Spy Briefings Failed to Meet Legal Test, Lawmakers Say

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/politics/21intel.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1135141901-cKwgYo4xbP4EjsELZE/X1g&pagewanted=print

Spy Briefings Failed to Meet Legal Test, Lawmakers Say

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - The limited oral briefings provided by the White House to a handful of lawmakers about the domestic eavesdropping program may not have fulfilled a legal requirement under the National Security Act that calls for such reports to be in written form, Congressional officials from both parties said on Tuesday.

The White House has refused to describe the timing and scope of the briefings, except to say that there were more than a dozen. But among the small group of current and former Congressional leaders who have attended the high-level gatherings conducted by Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House, several have described them as sessions in which aides were barred and note-taking was prohibited.

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Without a written record or the recollections of staff members to guide them, members of Congress who have attended the briefings have provided starkly different versions of what they were told at the sessions, which they said were almost invariably led by Mr. Cheney and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who as director of the National Security Agency oversaw the effort.

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A White House spokesman declined on Tuesday to say whether the administration had ever provided a written report to Congress about the eavesdropping program. Some reports have suggested that the first briefings to Congress took place in late 2001, before the law took effect.