* A federal court ruled the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program was illegal, prompting the rush in Congress this month to overhaul key espionage provisions.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's ruling earlier this year was a major blow to U.S. spying operations, McConnell said, even as intelligence analysts were expressing alarm that Al Qaeda was regrouping.
"We found ourselves in a position of actually losing ground."
McConnell said the ruling came during a routine court review of the program. It meant the government had to get a court order to trace calls or e-mails that traveled on networks in the U.S., even if the parties at both ends were overseas.
The government obtained a temporary stay enabling it to continue intercepting e-mails and phone calls without individual warrants through May 31, McConnell said, as he began sounding alarms on Capitol Hill that a key piece of the nation's counterterrorism capabilities was about to be crippled.
Those warnings fueled a push in Congress to rewrite laws. The emergency legislation, set to expire in six months, allowed the government to resume its eavesdropping operations without individual warrants.
