Reuters) – Twelve of the 14 judges who have served this year on the most secret court in America are Republicans and half are former prosecutors.

One is a former director of the Illinois State Police. Another helped direct the White House war on drugs. One served as a prosecutor in the Whitewater case involving the Clintons’ real estate investments. Another forced President Bill Clinton to testify during the same scandal.

But judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, drawn from regular trial courts across the country, also have issued orders in public cases that belie their conservative, law-enforcement roots, sometimes ruling against the government in terrorism-related cases.

Years after the drug official – Reggie Walton – left George W. Bush’s White House, he sentenced Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, to 30 months in prison for perjury. And years after Bush appointed the Whitewater prosecutor – John Bates – to the federal bench, he declared part of a law on military commissions unconstitutional.

The trial court judges who sit on the FISA court wield great power working in secret. The court has come under scrutiny after Britain’s Guardian newspaper published details of a secret FISA court order requiring Verizon Communications to provide data to the NSA.

While U.S. intelligence officials have insisted that the FISA process is thorough, little attention has focused on the judges themselves.

Selected by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, FISA judges serve for staggered seven-year terms. Although the court carries 11 judges at a time, 14 have served this year because of routine turnover.

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