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By Adam Liptak
The New York Times
Friday 19 January 2007
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In a four-paragraph letter on Wednesday announcing that the Bush administration had reversed its position and would
submit its domestic surveillance program to judicial supervision, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales used one phrase
three times. A secret court, he said, had fashioned a way to allow the program to be monitored by the judiciary without
compromising the need for "speed and agility."
That phrase also captures, some critics say, the administration's moving-target litigation strategy, one that often
seeks to change the terms of the debate just as a claim of executive authority is about to be tested in the courts or in
Congress.
On Wednesday, the administration announced that an unnamed judge on the secret court, in a nonadversarial proceeding
that apparently cannot be appealed, had issued orders that apparently both granted surveillance requests and set out
some ground rules for how such requests would be handled.
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