WASHINGTON, July 27 (Xinhua) -- The White House denied on Friday that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller III on Thursday contradicted the sworn testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales over the administration's internal dissent about a warrantless eavesdropping program.

"No, we don't think he (Mueller) did," White House spokesman Tony Snow told a news briefing when asked if Mueller contradicted the sworn testimony of Gonzales, by telling Congress that the surveillance program was the subject of a dramatic legal debate within the Bush administration.

Snow said the Justice Department and the White House agreed in 2004 that there was a legal basis for intercepting conversations or communications involving terrorist suspects in the United States and overseas.

"There's no dispute about that," he said.

In his testimony at the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Mueller appeared to confirm that the Terrorist Surveillance Program run by the National Security Agency was at issue in a nighttime visit by Gonzales to the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who was under sedation and recovering from surgery.

His remarks differed from testimony earlier this week from Gonzales, who told a Senate panel that a legal disagreement aired at the hospital did not concern the NSA program.

Mueller was not present during the hospital visit but testified that Ashcroft briefed him on the conversation.

In testimony on May 15, former deputy attorney general James Comey recounted how Gonzales, then White House counselor, and Andrew Card, then White House chief of staff, went to George Washington University Hospital on the evening of March 10, 2004, in an attempt to persuade a barely conscious Ashcroft, who had just undergone emergency surgery for gallstone pancreatitis, to sign a document recertifying the spying program.

Ashcroft refused and deferred to Comey as the acting attorney general, according to Comey. Comey said that when Bush reauthorized the program anyway the next day, he, Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were all prepared to resign.

Mueller's testimony presents a new problem for the Gonzales, whose credibility has come under attack from Democrats and some Republicans, over the spying program and events surrounding the firing last year of nine federal prosecutors.

On Thursday, a group of Senate Democrats called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Gonzales for possible perjury.

"The attorney general took an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," Schumer said of Gonzales' testimonies during congressional hearings.

"Instead, he tells the half-truth, the partial truth and everything but the truth," he said, "And he does it not once, and not twice, but over and over and over again."