Judge orders Administration to hand over domestic spying documents

A Federal Judge has ordered the Justice Department to hand over documents abut the NSA surveillance program within 20 days. Somebody remind me 20 days from now. I'm betting these documents won't see the light of day until Bush is out of office, if ever.

Judge Orders Action on Spying Documents

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer 15 minutes ago

A federal judge dealt a setback to the Bush administration on its warrantless surveillance program, ordering the Justice Department on Thursday to release documents about the highly classified effort within 20 days or compile a list of what it is withholding.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy said a private group will suffer irreparable harm if the documents it has been seeking since December are not processed promptly under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Justice Department failed to meet the time restraints under FOIA and failed to make a case that it was impractical to deal quickly with the request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said no determination has been made as to what the government's next step will be.

At a court hearing a week ago, Justice Department lawyer Rupa Bhattacharyya said the government would respond starting March 3, but she said she had no information on when the process might be completed.

Timing will depend on complexity, "and in this case there are a lot of complexities," Bhattacharyya said.