Covert actions are intelligence activities which may not be secret -- a coup to topple an unfriendly leader would be a covert action -- but where success and lives depend crucially on the hand of the United States being hidden.

For this reason, the law has since 1991 allowed officials to report about them only to a handful of top lawmakers from each chamber: the so-called Gang of Eight -- the chairmen and senior minority-party members of both intelligence committees and the senior-most lawmakers of both parties from each chamber.

But now Senators on the intelligence committee, bruised by what many of them see as an abuse of that license in regard to President Bush's program of warrantless counter-terrorist surveillance, are moving to dramatically expand reporting requirements for covert actions, and end the process of limiting briefings for other kinds of intelligence activities altogether.

At a closed meeting last week, the committee marked up its authorization bill for the 2007 fiscal year, and approved a report accompanying the bill.

At that meeting, a coalition of the committee's Democrats with two GOP moderates -- Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska -- defeated Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, and other Republicans to approve a series of amendments to the bill authored by Diane Feinstein, D-Calif.

The amendments clarify existing law on oversight, which says that the committee and its counterpart in the House must be kept "fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities," by specifying that "the committee ...includes each member of the committee."

In relation to the administration's warrantless surveillance program, officials have argued that they fulfilled their obligations under the law by briefing the chairmen and senior democrats of both committees. That was also the position taken by Chairman Roberts and his senior staff.

Critics have countered that the law only provides for limited briefings for covert actions.

"The section is titled 'clarification of (the) definition of congressional intelligence committees'," pointed out a Democratic committee staffer, "not 'expansion.' As far as we're concerned that is what the law has always meant, and we are just making that clear."

A senior staffer with the committee leadership said that the members who had voted for the Feinstein amendment would be disappointed, even if it became law.

"You can't legislate away the president's constitutional right to control access to classified information," the staffer said, noting that the existing provisions of the U.S. Code on the matter were caveated, "To the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters."

Access to information about secret intelligence activities by lawmakers was "a negotiated process," the staffer said. "The law can say, 'You have to do it that way,'" the staffer added, but the executive branch "doesn't have to do it that way."

The amendments keep intact the provision for briefing a smaller group of lawmakers on covert actions. "That exception was designed for short-term, operational information where lives might be at risk if details leaked," said the Democratic staffer, adding it had been abused by the administration in regard to the warrantless surveillance program.

The Gang of Eight exception "was never intended to cover large, ongoing collection programs like the one the National Security Agency is running," said the Democrat.

But the amendments also require that such limited briefings must be in writing, and -- if they do not include every member of the committee -- any member excluded "will be provided with a notification of this fact and will be provided with a summary of the intelligence activity or covert action in a manner sufficient to permit such Members to assess the legality, benefits, costs, and advisability of the intelligence activity or covert action," according to the report.

The senior staffer characterized that language as requiring, in essence "that all the members be told everything about everything."

"That's not going to happen," he concluded.

Another amendment forced into the legislation by the same coalition was authored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. That language states that officials "must provide to the intelligence committees (of the House and Senate) any intelligence documents or information requested" by their chairmen or senior Democrats -- and do so within 15 days.

In response to concerns that led to a similar provision being stripped from the 2004 intelligence reform law, the language specifies that the law applies "only to existing intelligence documents and information and would not apply to requests to generate new intelligence assessments, reports, estimates, legal opinions, or other information."

The cross-party support for both sets of amendments "was about the members wanting to make sure they are getting the information they need to do their jobs," said the Democratic staffer.

The report, along with the bill itself, will now be referred to the full Senate. But its fate is unclear. Last year, an anonymous block -- apparently from one or more GOP Senators angered by Democrat-authored provisions of the bill -- prevented the committee's legislation from reaching the Senate floor.

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