Congress has moved to reassert its role as a check on the nation's most sensitive spy programs after having been marginalized for years in the management of covert intelligence operations.

President Obama is expected in the coming days to sign legislation that cleared both chambers of Congress this week, imposing new requirements on the White House to keep lawmakers informed of secret overseas operations andthe legal rationales undergirding them.

The development represents a shift in balance between Congress and the executive branch as new information has surfaced about the secret activities of the CIA, which has been given authority to kill a U.S. citizen in Yemen and has been operating elite insurgent-hunting teams in Afghanistan.

The fight over disclosure requirements dates to the early days of the administration of President George W. Bush, who for years kept all but a handful of lawmakers in the dark about some CIA activities, including the use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.

More broadly, the bill marks an effort by Congress to regain influence over the intelligence community's priorities - and its spending - after years of being effectively shut out. The last time Congress passed an intelligence authorization bill that was signed into law by the president was in 2004.

The result has been a weakening of oversight of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"This bill not only reverses that trend but strengthens our oversight," she said.

Some lawmakers expressed skepticism, citing loopholes in the language. Asked to assess the potential impact of the new disclosure requirements, Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the committee, said this: "Zip city."

The central provision of the bill would make it more difficult for an administration to withhold information about covert-action programs from the House and Senate intelligence committees.

In most cases, the White House would be required to allow all members to attend classified briefings on sensitive overseas operations. During the Bush administration, those sessions were routinely restricted to the so-called "Gang of Eight," meaning only the top Republican and Democrat on each committee, plus House and Senate leaders.

The latest bill was endorsed by the full Senate but attracted only one Republican vote in the House, passing 244 to 181.

The disclosure requirements in the new bill are not ironclad. The White House would still be able to confine briefings to the Gang of Eight but would have to notify other members that they are being excluded and provide them with at least a "general description" of the program being discussed.