News Network

Federal agents found much of the information produced by the Bush administration's top-secret warrantless surveillance program vague and difficult to use, a sweeping review of the program found.
Then-President George Bush and other top administration officials have said the program was a critical tool in preventing terrorist attacks. However, a report Friday by the inspectors general of the CIA, the Justice Department, the Pentagon and other agencies found that some FBI and CIA agents were frustrated by the secrecy surrounding the program.

Former CIA chiefs Michael Hayden and Porter Goss told investigators the wiretaps filled a gap in U.S. intelligence. One senior official quoted in the report called the wiretaps, dubbed the "President's Surveillance Program" by the report, "a key resource," while the FBI considered it "one tool of many" in their efforts to head off terrorist plots, the report states.

"Even though most PSP leads were determined not to have any connection to terrorism, many of the FBI witnesses believed the mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile," the report states.

The program was hugely controversial when Bush acknowledged its existence in 2005. Critics said the program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a 1978 law passed to rein in the wiretapping abuses of the Watergate era.

Bush's approval allowed the National Security Agency to intercept communications between people in the United States and overseas who were suspected of having ties to terrorists without getting a court order. He and other officials said the program "prevented attacks and saved lives," as Vice President Dick Cheney put it in a May speech critical of their successors in the Obama administration.
source: cnn.com