The House was to meet Thursday in its first closed session in 25 years to debate a Democratic leadership-backed rewrite of electronic surveillance law.

President Bush meanwhile said he would veto the bill. The measure is not expected to advance in the Senate after a final House vote, which was expected to be delayed until Friday.

Earlier, Minority Leader John A. Boehner said Republicans would ask for the closed session to have an “open and honest debate about some of the important details about this program, that don’t need to be heard in public.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has agreed to the request.

“We’re having debate on the bill. And I don’t have any problem with having part of it in closed session, and part of it in open session,” Pelosi said.

It would only be the fourth such House session since 1830.

Meanwhile, the fate of the legislation hinged on 21 conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats who endorsed the Senate’s version of the surveillance law overhaul in January. They have been targeted by liberal activists who want them to reverse their position and appeared to be weighing whether the new House measure would bring the contentious issue any closer to being resolved.

The final vote on the measure was expected to be close.

A senior Democratic aide said party leaders were “whipping pretty aggressively,” and a ringleader of the 21 Blue Dogs, Leonard L. Boswell, D-Iowa, said the new legislation satisfies his concerns.

If that’s what comes up, I’m prepared to stand up and support it,” he said.

He said he’s been asked by some of the others what he thinks, and “that’s what I’m telling them.”

Unlike the Senate-passed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rewrite, the new House Democratic version would not grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies being sued for their cooperation in warrantless surveillance after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Instead, it would give the companies legal avenues to defend themselves in court cases by allowing a judge to review classified evidence that could bolster their arguments.

The bill also would create a commission to investigate the warrantless surveillance program and put more limitations on executive branch spying authority than the Bush administration wants.

Negotiations between the Senate and House have stalled, primarily over the retroactive immunity question.

Bush has insisted on retroactive immunity and demanded the House take up the Senate version, which passed Feb. 12 by a bipartisan 68-29 vote. The president, backed by congressional Republicans, also has rejected Democratic efforts to extend a temporary law which expired Feb. 16.

First posted March 13, 2008 1:51 p.m.