President George W. Bush has agreed to subject to judicial review his controversial National Security Agency domestic spying programme, in the White House’s second recent big policy reversal.

Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, on Thursday said he had reached a compromise with the White House to submit the NSA programme – which allows warrantless eavesdropping of the international communications of Americans with suspected links to terrorists – to scrutiny by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.