WASHINGTON — In January 2007, Judge Malcolm Howard issued an extraordinary order on behalf of the nation’s secret surveillance court. He interpreted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires individual warrants to wiretap on domestic soil, in a way that authorized the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, according to documents declassified on Friday.

But three months later, Judge Howard’s secret order came up for reauthorization before a colleague, Judge Roger Vinson. He balked, the documents showed. Judge Vinson permitted only a short extension of the program. The Bush administration then sought legislation, the Protect America Act, that amended the surveillance act to explicitly authorize the program.

While it was known that in early 2007 the FISA court had briefly approved the National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program, the newly disclosed documents shed new light on an extraordinary moment in the history of surveillance inside the United States. The revelations included the identities of the judges and aspects of the legal theory that they disagreed about.

The newly available documents, which include heavily redacted versions of the orders and Justice Department briefs seeking them, were released in response to separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and by The New York Times.