Two U.S. congressional committees have asked former attorney general John Ashcroft to testify about his role in a dramatic showdown over a controversial eavesdropping program, U.S. media reported Saturday.

The Senate and House Intelligence Committees are asking Ashcroft to testify about a March 2004 hospital-room confrontation during which he refused to sign off on a continuation of President George W. Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program, according to a report posted on the Web site of Newsweek, a weekly magazine.

The report, quoting congressional and administration sources, said the Senate Intelligence Committee has tentatively scheduled a closed-door hearing for later this month.

The panel plans to question Ashcroft, his former chief of staff David Ayres and former deputy attorney general James Comey about a heated dispute with the White House that roiled the Justice Department three years ago. The House committee is also planning a separate closed-door hearing with Ashcroft

The requests for Ashcroft's testimony reflect the mounting frustration on the part of committee leaders in both chambers who feel they have been denied vital information about the wiretapping issue by the Bush administration, the report said.

Despite having received numerous private briefings from senior administration officials over the last year, members were stunned to learn just how deeply troubled the Justice Department was about aspects of the program - a glimpse they got only when Comey publicly testified about the program at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month.

Ashcroft, 65, who served as attorney general during Bush's first term and is now a Washington lobbyist, has steadfastly refused to make any public comment about the eavesdropping dispute.

In testimony on May 15, Comey recounted how Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, then White House counselor, and Andrew Card, then White House chief of staff, went to George Washington University Hospital on the evening of March 10, 2004, in an attempt to persuade a barely conscious Ashcroft, who had just undergone emergency surgery for gallstone pancreatitis, to sign a document recertifying the spying program.

But Ashcroft refused and deferred to Comey as the acting attorney general, according to Comey. Comey said that when Bush reauthorized the program anyway the next day, he, Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were all prepared to resign.

Comey said that, after a meeting with Mueller, Bush subsequently agreed to changes that the Justice Department was prepared to accept.

In December 2005, The New York Times first publicly disclosed that after Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush authorized a highly classified program, without seeking approval from a special foreign-intelligence surveillance court, that allows the National Security Agency to monitor, without court warrants, international telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens with ties to al Qaeda suspects abroad.

The disclosure of the spying program caused a political uproar in Washington, and congressional hearings were held to investigate its legality.

Source: Xinhua