National Intel Director Comes Clean . . . A Bit

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell pulled the curtain back on previously classified details of government surveillance and of a secretive court whose recent rulings created new hurdles for the Bush administration as it tries to prevent terrorism.

In an interview with the El Paso Times, McConnell's made comments that raised eyebrows for their frank discussion of previously classified eavesdropping work conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. Among the disclosures:

—McConnell confirmed for the first time that the private companies were complicit with Bush's warrantless surveillance program. AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications companies are now being sued for their cooperation.

—He provided new details on court rulings handed down by the secret FISA court, which approves classified eavesdropping operations. McConnell said a ruling that went into effect May 31 required the government to get court warrants to monitor communications between two foreigners if the conversation travels on a wire in the U.S. network. Millions of calls each day do, because of the robust nature of the U.S. systems.

—McConnell said it takes 200 hours to assemble a FISA warrant on a single telephone number. "We're going backwards," he said. "We couldn't keep up."

—Offering never-disclosed figures, McConnell also revealed that fewer than 100 people inside the United States are monitored under FISA warrants. However, he said, thousands of people overseas are monitored.

McConnell's admissions were a radical departure from the Bush government's normally tight-lipped approach to disclosing any information about how it spies on electronic communications. But at the same time, he fell back on some of the cliched rhetoric used by Bush to justify the Stalinesque secrecy of his administration. According to McConnell, the current debate in Congress about whether to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will cost American lives because of all the information it is revealing to terrorists. "Part of this is a classified world. The fact that we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die," he said.

After the interview, McConnell asked reporter Chris Roberts to consider whether enemies of the U.S. could gain from the information he just shared in the interview, leaving it to the paper to decide what to publish. "I don't believe it damaged national security or endangered any of our people," said El Paso Times Executive Editor Dionicio Flores in the decision to post the interview to its website.