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House group to oversee NSA eavesdroppingEleven lawmakers set to be briefed on domestic spying programFrom Kevin Bohn and Deirdre Walsh  YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSWASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House Intelligence Committee has set up a special group to conduct oversight of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program, a spokesman for the panel's chairman said Wednesday. The group received a briefing on the program's operations at a meeting Wednesday afternoon at the White House, said Jamal Ware, spokesman for Chairman Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican. The NSA program reportedly monitors terror suspects' communications in the United States so long as one end of those conversations is conducted overseas. The Bush administration has argued that the resolution authorizing military action after the 9/11 attacks and the president's authority as commander in chief give him power to order intelligence agencies to monitor calls between people in the United States and terrorism suspects overseas without a court order, as the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires. Administration officials assert the program is necessary to battle terrorists and that its disclosure in December damaged national security. Critics maintain the program is illegal because no warrants are requested for the eavesdropping and it may infringe on Americans' civil liberties. Ware said the House group includes 11 lawmakers from the 21-member committee, adding that it is not a subcommittee but a "subgroup of the full intelligence committee." It includes the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committee's relevant subcommittees, he said. A congressional official also said the group includes the committee's ranking minority member, Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat. "They're getting the full briefing today on all aspects of the program," Ware said. There's no plan for what the next step will be, except that the subgroup will go to the NSA for a follow-up briefing, he said. Wednesday's briefing would be the most detailed information given to more than just the chairman and minority ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee. The administration has refused to give detailed briefings to the full memberships of the intelligence committees. The House group is similar to a special subcommittee set up by the Senate Intelligence Committee to review the NSA program. The compromise on how to conduct the briefings comes as various proposals face debate on whether the NSA monitoring should come under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act set up the court to provide a mechanism for intelligence agencies to ask for warrants for surveillance inside the United States. 
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