Marc Rotenberg [President, Electronic Privacy Information Center]: "When the New York Times first reported in December 2005 that President Bush had undertaken electronic surveillance in the United States of U.S. citizens without court approval, EPIC immediately filed a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request with the Department of Justice to obtain the legal memos prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel in support of the program.

Whatever one's views may be about the Constitutionality of warrantless wiretapping, we believed that it was critical for the public and for lawmakers in Congress to have the opportunity to assess the government's legal analysis.

Through the course of the FOIA litigation that followed, EPIC obtained several important documents that raised significant questions about the legality of the wiretap program. But we have still not received the documents prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel.

With the recent decision granting EPIC's motion for in camera inspection to determine whether the documents can be released, we are close now to obtaining finally these important documents.

We hope that once the judge has had the opportunity to examine these memos, he will conclude that the public has the right to know the legal basis for the actions that the government undertakes."