In a strongly worded 44-page ruling, U.S. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor wrote that the program was "obviously in violation" of the First and Fourth Amendments, the doctrine of the separation of powers and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

The ruling roils the future of both the program itself and of the efforts in Congress to give it a basis in legislation.

The Department of Justice, which said Thursday it would appeal the ruling, had tried to assert state secrets privilege, arguing that the case could not go forward without revealing classified information about its surveillance capabilities. Diggs, citing the numerous public defenses of the program by officials, wrote that she found that argument "disingenuous and without merit."

Attorney general Alberto Gonzales was asked whether, in the light of her reasoning on that point, he now regretted the decision the president made to acknowledge the problem and speak openly about it.

"Obviously that was a tactical decision that had to be made early in this matter," he replied, adding, that it was "important to reassure the American people," once the program was disclosed, about its "narrow scope" and how it was "carefully reviewed."

The ACLU had brought the case on behalf of a group of reporters, academics, lawyers and activists who believed that their communications with clients, sources or others might have been monitored by the National Security Agency as part of the program, thereby violating their Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable searches, and chilling their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and association.

The U.S. government argued that the plaintiffs did not have standing because they could not show that they had been injured by the program, and that the surveillance was lawful because it was authorized by the president as commander-in-chief as a wartime measure.

Diggs granted a permanent injunction against the surveillance Monday morning, but that was stayed temporarily, with the ACLU's agreement, later in the day.

ACLU Spokeswoman Jenny Egan told United Press International that they opposed a stay pending an appeal -- which could take months to wend its way through the courts. She said the ACLU attorneys had agreed to a much shorter suspension of the injunction until the court could set a date to hold a full hearing on the U.S. government's petition for a stay pending appeal.

The White House said in a statement from spokesman Tony Snow that hearing would take place Sept. 7.

"We couldn't disagree more with this ruling," Snow said. "U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed that the program has helped stop terrorist attacks and saved American lives."

Statements from numerous leading Republican lawmakers echoed the White House in citing the London-based plot to attack transatlantic airliners disrupted last week as evidence of the need for the program.

"It is disappointing that a judge would take it upon herself to disarm America during a time of war," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer told a conference call for reporters that the case "is not about whether terrorists can be wiretapped ... it's about what procedures and oversight is in place" over such surveillance. He cited the views of several Democratic members of Congress who have been briefed on the details of the surveillance program and say that its objectives could be achieved through the framework of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

Barnett Rubin, an academic from New York University who has worked extensively in Afghanistan, said that the perception of the United States as lawless in its prosecution of the war it had declared on terrorism hurt the nation's image "among the very people (in Afghanistan and elsewhere) whose support we most need."

"This is not just a victory for constitutionality ... for the separation of powers, this is a victory for national security," he said.

One part of the ACLU's case was dismissed, that against the administration's reported program of data mining -- sifting vast databases of information about the telephone calls of Americans in the hunt for suspicious patterns of behavior that might indicate terrorist activity.

Diggs said that not enough was known about that program -- which has not even been publicly acknowledged by officials -- for the case to proceed without risking the exposure of classified information and therefore allowed the government's claim of state secrecy privilege on that element of the suit.

Nonetheless, the ACLU said the ruling was the latest in a series of judicial blows to the administration's aggressive exertion of presidential power -- "another nail in the coffin of executive unilateralism," said Jaffer.

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