Ending months of resistance, the White House has agreed to give House members access to secret documents about its warrantless wiretapping program, a congressional official said Thursday.The Bush administration is trying to convince the House to protect from civil lawsuits the telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on Americans without the approval of a court. Congress created the court 30 years ago to oversee such activities.
House Intelligence and Judiciary committee members and staff will begin reading the documents at the White House Thursday, said an aide to Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas.
They asked for the documents last May and finally got them now as the debate over the surveillance rages and will probably culminate this weekend. Nice.
Remember that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) asked for the full Senate to have access to such documents last year, a request that seems to have been ignored.