In a bluntly worded letter sent to the White House yesterday, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter of Pennsylvania, accused Vice President Cheney of breaching protocol while attempting to head off hearings on one of the administration’s surveillance programs.

Mr. Specter, a Republican, expressed irritation that he was not consulted or even included when Mr. Cheney called other Republican senators on the committee to urge them to oppose Mr. Specter’s effort to call telecommunications company executives to testify, perhaps behind closed doors, about allegations that the federal government has established a database with information on billions of domestic phone calls.

“I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some point,” Mr. Specter wrote in a letter made public by his office. “This was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republican senators’ caucus lunch yesterday and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table.”

In addition to complaining about the end-run around his authority, Mr. Specter stated flatly that a National Security Agency program to listen in on calls between persons in America and alleged Al Qaeda affiliates abroad violates a statute Congress passed in 1978. “There is no doubt that the NSA program violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which sets forth the exclusive procedure for domestic wiretaps which requires the approval of the FISA court,” the senator wrote. “It may be that the president has inherent authority under Article II to trump that statute but the president does not have a blank check.”

Mr. Specter said he has been awaiting a response from the administration to legislation he has proposed requiring that a special federal court examine the constitutionality of the expanded surveillance effort. On Tuesday, he postponed any action on subpoenas after Senator Hatch, a Republican of Utah, said he believed he could secure White House support for the legislation.

Mr. Specter complained that the administration has been unwilling to explain the surveillance to his committee and said the telephone executives represent a promising way to learn more about the program. “The committee would obviously have a much easier time making our case for enforcement of subpoenas against the telephone companies which do not have the plea of executive privilege. That may ultimately be the course of least resistance,” he wrote. “I am available to try to work this out with the administration without the necessity of a constitutional confrontation between Congress and the president.”

Mr. Specter also said his party loyalties make it awkward for him to adopt a confrontational stance with the White House. “It is neither pleasant nor easy to raise these issues with the administration of my own party, but I do so because of their importance,” he wrote.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, Jennifer Mayfield, said the vice president had not yet had a chance to review Mr. Specter’s letter but is open to legislative proposals on the issue.

“While we do not need any legislation to carry out the terrorist surveillance, we will listen to the ideas of senators,” she said.

It is unclear whether Mr. Specter would have the votes needed to issue subpoenas in defiance of the White House’s wishes. The committee includes 10 Republicans and eight Democrats. Even if all the Democrats joined with Mr. Specter in a vote on subpoenas, he would still need the support of at least one Republican committee member.

In addition, Senator Feinstein, a Democrat of California, signaled at Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee meeting that she would not support issuing subpoenas in connection with the surveillance effort. As a member of the intelligence committee, she has been briefed in detail on the telephone tapping and tracing programs. Her opposition means Mr. Specter would need the votes of at least two Republicans to move forward.

“From what I know of the program, I believe this works,” Ms. Feinstein said at a judiciary committee meeting Tuesday.

However, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy of Vermont, warned that the panel was abdicating its oversight role. “Why don’t we just recess for the rest of the year, pass a resolution which a Republican-controlled Congress could easily pass, and just simply say: We’ll have no more hearings and Vice President Cheney will just tell the nation what laws we’ll have; he’ll let us know what laws will be followed and which laws will not be followed,” Mr. Leahy said sarcastically. “Now, of course, it would destroy even the last vestiges, the few remaining vestiges of a real check-and-balance democracy, but that’s basically what we’re saying.”