WASHINGTON - The U.S. Congress' new blueprint for intelligence spending includes a mysterious and expensive spy program that drew extraordinary criticism from leading Democrats, with one saying the highly classified project is a threat to national security.

In an unusual rebuke, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, complained Wednesday the spy project is "totally unjustified and very, very wasteful and dangerous to the national security." He called the program "stunningly expensive."

Rockefeller and three other Democratic senators - Richard Durbin of Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon - refused to sign the congressional compromise negotiated by others in the House of Representatives and Senate that provides for future U.S. intelligence activities.

The compromise noted the four senators believe the mystery program is unnecessary and its cost unjustified and "they believe that the funds for this item should be expended on other intelligence programs that will make a surer and greater contribution to national security."

Each senator - and more than two-dozen current and former U.S. officials - declined to further describe or identify the disputed program, citing its classified nature. Thirteen other senators on the intelligence committee and all their counterparts in the House approved the compromise.

The measure, which authorizes spending for intelligence activities for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, is separate from the intelligence-overhaul legislation that received final congressional approval Wednesday.

The rare criticisms of a highly secretive project in such a public forum intrigued outside intelligence experts, who said the program is almost certainly a spy-satellite system, perhaps with technology to destroy potential attackers. They cited tantalizing hints in Rockefeller's remarks, such as the program's enormous expense and its alleged danger to national security.

A U.S. panel in 2001 described U.S. defence and spy satellites as frighteningly vulnerable, saying technology to launch attacks in space is widely available internationally. The study, by a commission whose members included Donald Rumsfeld prior to his appointment as defence secretary for President George W. Bush, concluded the United States is "an attractive candidate for a Space Pearl Harbor."

Sending even defensive satellite weapons into orbit could start an arms race in space, warned John Pike, a defence analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, who has studied anti-satellite weapons for more than three decades. Pike said other countries would inevitably demand proof any weapons were only defensive.

"It would present just absolutely insurmountable verification problems because we are not going to let anybody look at our spy satellites," Pike said.

"It is just not going to happen."

Rockefeller's description of the spy project as a "major funding acquisition program" suggests a price tag in the range of billions of dollars, intelligence experts said. But even expensive imagery or eavesdropping satellites - so long as they're unarmed - are rarely criticized as a danger to U.S. security, they noted.

"From the price, it's almost certainly a satellite program," said James Bamford, author of two books about the National Security Agency.

"In the intelligence community, it's so hard to get a handle on what's going on, particularly with the satellite programs."

Another expert agreed.

"It's hard to think of most any satellite program, at least the standard ones, as dangerous to national security," said Jeffrey Richelson, who wrote a highly regarded book about CIA technology in 2001.

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