The White House has offered leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee access to legal documents related to the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program, senators said Thursday.

But Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said while the White House had offered the documents to both him and the panel’s ranking Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, he was pushing for the entire committee to receive access to the documents. But he also said he would take advantage of the offer and review the documents.

The Bush administration is asking Congress to grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies being sued for their alleged role in the NSA program.

A Judiciary Committee aide had said the panel was holding off on a markup of legislation rewriting the rules for electronic surveillance until it received access to those documents, which pertain to the legal foundation of the NSA program.

The entire Senate Intelligence Committee and its staff did receive access to the documents prior to its approval of draft surveillance legislation last week, and had conditioned its own markup of getting to view them. That committee’s draft legislation includes retroactive legal immunity.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the White House’s offer a “breakthrough.

“We’re going to get something done, and we need to do it before the end of this year,” Reid said.

Congress sent a bill to President Bush in August that made changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, PL 95-511), but the new law (PL 110-55) expires in February.