Evan Perez of the Wall Street Journal reports that large telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T participated in electronic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency based on letters from then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President Bush’s legal counsel.  

It appears that Congress will provide immunity to the telephone providers, though they participated in this program at a time when the Bush Administration was operating outside the law — the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for judicial approval of requests by the NSA to monitor communications involving American citizens.  It is hard to imagine these companies, in the wake of 9/11, spurning White House overtures for assistance, particularly if the U.S. attorney general was assuring them that their participation was legal.  The decision before Congress is whether the letters were legal.

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