The New York Times says a controversial government surveillance program has monitored a handful of purely domestic communications.

Unidentified officials say the National Security Agency intercepted the communications apparently by accident.

The White House says President Bush's order setting up the domestic surveillance program applied only to cases where one party on a call or e-mail message was outside the United States.

But telecommunications experts say with the globalized nature of communications networks, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where a message originated from.

In a separate development, The Washington Post says a federal judge has resigned from the secret court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases, apparently due to deep concerns that the administration's actions may have tainted the court's work.