WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 – A federal judge has resigned from the court
that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases, reportedly
over concerns about the secret program authorized by President Bush
that bypasses the court and allows spying on people believed to be
communicating with terror suspects abroad.

United States District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, notified the chief justice
of the United States, John Roberts, of his resignation on Monday,
according to The Washington Post. It said Judge Robertson gave no
reason.

Anger about the secret surveillance program helped fuel a
Democratic-led effort currently blocking renewal of the USA Patriot
Act. Democrats say some provisions infringe on civil liberties – by
allowing access to library and business records, for example – and
should be dropped. They seek a three-month extension of the act while
those provisions are reworked.

But Mr. Bush, speaking from the White House South Lawn today, lashed
out at the blocking effort, saying, “This obstruction is inexcusable.”
Later, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that if the act lapses at
year’s end, “We will not be as safe.”

Judge Robertson has not commented on his resignation. But The Post
quoted unnamed colleagues as saying he was concerned that information
gained under the secret program could then be used to press the
so-called FISA court to obtain warrants for further monitoring,
subverting the congressionally defined process. It quoted one
colleague, speaking anonymously, as saying some judges feared that the
FISA body had become a “Potemkin court.”

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, declined to
comment on the matter. “Judge Robertson did not comment on the matter
and I don’t see any reason why we need to,” he said.

When Mr. Gonzales was asked about the resignation, he replied: “I
don’t know the reason. I’m not going to speculate why a judge would
step down from the FISA court.”

FISA judges are limited to a single term, and Judge Robertson’s
would have expired in May. He was first named to the federal bench here
by President Bill Clinton in 1994. Chief Justice William Rehnquist
later appointed him as one of the 11 judges on the FISA court, which
conducts its work in secrecy. Judge Robertson has not resigned from his
district judgeship, an aide said.

The emerging details of the secret surveillance program – first
reported Friday by The New York Times – have angered many in Congress,
who question the president’s authority to order such warrantless spying
on people in the United States and who deny that they were adequately
informed or consulted.

The administration said it has held a dozen classified briefings
with congressional leaders on the matter, but at least two Democrats
who took part – Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, and
former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota – have said they received little information and raised serious concerns at the time.

A bipartisan group of senators – Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia
Snowe of Maine, both Republicans, and Dianne Feinstein of California,
Carl Levin of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon, all Democrats – called
this week for the Senate judiciary and intelligence panels to open a
joint investigation of the matter.

Several critics of the classified program have asked why, if the
FISA court had proved too cumbersome in an age of sharply heightened
terror threat, the administration had not asked Congress to streamline
the process.

Mr. Gonzales said today that the administration had studied and rejected that option.

“We were advised it would be virtually impossible to obtain
legislation of this kind without compromising the program,” he said.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney
have vigorously defended the surveillance program as vitally important
in preventing potentially calamitous terrorist attacks like those of
Sept. 11, 2001.

“I would argue that the actions that we’ve taken there are totally
appropriate and consistent with the constitutional authority of the
president,” Mr. Cheney told reporters Tuesday aboard Air Force Two en
route from Pakistan to Oman. “You know, it’s not an accident that we
haven’t been hit in four years.”

The administration has said that even small delays under the FISA process could be critical.

The FISA court, created in 1978, can legally authorize secret
surveillance but only after the government shows probable cause that it
is aimed at foreign governments or their agents, not what the law
defines as “U.S. persons,” a term that includes aliens legally in the
country.

The new program allows for surveillance, without FISA warrant, of
people in the United States when they are believed to be communicating
with terror suspects abroad. But the program has at times captured
purely domestic communications, The New York Times reported today.

Quoting unnamed officials, it said that a small number of internal
communications were captured, apparently accidentally. The widespread
use of cellphones reportedly makes it harder at times to determine
whether a call crosses borders.

Mr. Bush had said in a news conference Monday that internal
communications were not part of the secret program. “I want to stress,
and that is, is that these calls are not intercepted within the
country,” he said. “If you’re calling from Houston to L.A., that – that
call is not monitored.”