WASHINGTON - NOT enough relevant officials knew the size and depth of an unprecedented surveillance program during the Bush administration, let alone signed off on it, a team of federal inspectors general (IG) found.

Those involved THE only piece of the intelligence-gathering operation acknowledged by the Bush White House was the wiretapping-without-warrants effort. The administration acknowledged in 2005 that it had allowed the National Security Agency to intercept international communications that passed through US cables without seeking court orders. ... more

The Bush administration pulled in a great quantity of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, the IGs reported on Friday. They questioned the legal basis for the effort but shielded almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.

The report, mandated by Congress last year and delivered to lawmakers on Friday, also says it's unclear how much valuable intelligence the program has yielded.

On the subject of oversight, the report particularly criticises Mr John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos defending the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says.

The report, compiled by five IGs, refers to 'unprecedented collection activities' by US intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush after the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Just what those activities involved remains classified, but the IGs pointedly say that any continued use of the secret programs must be 'carefully monitored.'

Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the 'President's Surveillance Program' did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. But FBI agents told the authors that the 'mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile.'

The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside the government, but five former Bush administration officials refused to be questioned. They were Mr Ashcroft, Mr Yoo, former CIA Director George Tenet, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Mr David Addington, an aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to the report, Mr Addington could personally decide who in the administration was 'read into' - allowed access to - the classified program. -- AP