PRESIDENT BUSH suffered a significant defeat last night when the Senate blocked attempts to renew the USA Patriot Act, the key post-September 11 law that gave his Administration broad powers to investigate US citizens.

In a crucial vote that signalled the growing influence of civil liberty concerns on Capitol Hill over anti-terror laws introduced after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the White House and Republican Senate leaders were unable to muster the 60 votes needed to thwart a threatened filibuster.

If a deal is not reached, much of the Act, which gives the FBI wide powers — including the authority to monitor secretly which books a citizen borrows from a public library — will expire on December 31.

The Senate rebellion was the second setback for Mr Bush this week in his quest to maintain unfettered presidential power in his prosecution of the War on Terror. He was forced on Thursday to end his opposition to a new law explicitly banning the torture of terror suspects held in US custody anywhere in the world.

The rebellion over the Patriot Act yesterday came as a separate but related controversy erupted, after it was revealed that American security agents have eavesdropped on thousands of people in the US without the court-approved warrants usually required.

In a report in The New York Times, it emerged that in 2002 Mr Bush authorised the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor tens of thousands of phone calls and e-mails inside the US without having to obtain the judicial approval required by statute.

The revelation, not denied by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, or Mr Bush’s spokesman, brought an angry response from civil liberty groups and the promise of a congressional inquiry by senior Republicans.

The standard remit of the NSA is to do foreign searches. The law governing secret surveillance inside the US, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, generally prohibits phone-tapping and computer searches without search warrants. Mr Bush signed the executive order after the seizure in Pakistan of numerous mobile phones and computers used by alleged al-Qaeda personnel. Hundreds of phone numbers and addresses found on the phones and computers were American.

Referring to the secret phone-tapping programme, Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said: “There is no doubt that this is inappropriate.” He said that there would be hearings into the NSA programme early next year and that they would have a “very, very high priority”.

John McCain, the Republican Senator from Arizona, said that if the report were true, “I obviously wouldn’t like it. We should be informed as to exactly what is going on.” Mr Bush asserted that “whatever I do to protect the American people” he does within the law and with “an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people”.

Defenders of the programme said that the secret eavesdropping had helped to uncover a plot by Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver, who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting al-Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge. White House lawyers apparently argued that the President had broad powers to order such searches and circumvent restrictions on NSA activities.

Caroline Fredrickson, of the American Civil Liberties Union, expressed “shock” that the White House “has gone so far in violating American civil liberties to the extent where it seems to be a violation of federal law”.

The defeat over the Patriot Act happened after several Senate Republicans effectively crossed the floor to vote with the mostly Democrat bloc that opposed renewing the law.

Scott McClellan, Mr Bush’s spokesman, said after the vote: “In the War on Terror, we cannot afford to be without these vital tools for a single moment. The time for Democrats to stop standing in the way has come.”

Patrick Leahy, a senior Senate Democrat, said: “It’s time we had some checks and balances in this country.”

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