WASHINGTON, July 18: US President George W. Bush prevented a review earlier this year by Justice Department lawyers of his warrantless domestic spying programme, Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales testified on Tuesday.

Gonzales told the US Senate Judiciary Committee, however, that he was confident the programme’s constitutionality would be upheld by a proposed review of it by a secret federal court.

Gonzales said Bush refused to give the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility access to the classified programme begun shortly after the September 11 attacks and disclosed in December by The New York Times.

The office announced in May it was unable to conduct an investigation into the role department lawyers had in developing the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping programme, which targets overseas telephone calls and emails of Americans with suspected terrorists ties.

Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, asked Gonzales why Bush declined access, saying, “Many other lawyers in the Department of Justice had clearance. Why not OPR?”

Noting the importance of the programme, Gonzales said: “The president of the United States makes decisions about who is ultimately given access.”

Specter and other lawmakers have questioned the legality of the programme, and have pushed for a court review of it.

Specter announced last week he had negotiated a deal with the White House to clear the way for the FISA court review.

Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked Gonzales if the proposed review was adequate without a case-by-case review.

Gonzales said, “We have confidence that the court will find that, in fact, this is a programme that is constitutional.”—Reuters