The Bush administration has agreed to allow a federal court that specializes in wiretap requests to oversee its non-warrant electronic surveillance program, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

In a letter to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote that a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has agreed to authorize the program and preserve "the speed and agility necessary" to battle terrorism.

The Bush administration has asserted for more than a year that it had the authority to monitor U.S. residents' international communications without a judge's approval, as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires. But many lawmakers and legal observers have questioned that claim and argued that President Bush violated that 1978 law by authorizing the eavesdropping.

"It proves that this surveillance has always been possible under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and that there was never a good reason to evade the law," Reyes said in a written statement.

Well, it's about damn time.

"These orders allow us to do the same thing that we've been doing, but we will be operating under the orders we've obtained from a FISA judge," the official said.

The government will ask the court to approve surveillance requests for 90 days, after which it must seek renewed permission. Justice Department officials said the court issued more than one order governing the program, but they refused to provide details of the still-classified program.

Basically, what they are saying is that the whole time there was no reason to be operating the program outside of the long established legal framework designed to govern this type of monitoring, and that the whole time this was just an attempt to see if they could get away with skirting checks intended for this type of program.

Gonzales wrote that the effort to bring the program under the FISA court dates back two years. That assertion drew questions at the White House, where Snow tried to fend off suggestions that Wednesday's announcement was politically timed.

I call bullshit! Of course it was politically timed. This would not have happened if the Republicans didn't lose control of Congress.

Administration to let court monitor domestic spying - CNN.com