National Security: Congressional Capitulation On Spying
For the past several months, the White House has been aggressively pressuring Congress to expand the administration's spying powers and update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
August 6, 2007 | by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, and Matt Corley Contact Us | Tell-a-Friend | Archives | Permalink |
NATIONAL SECURITY
Congressional Capitulation On Spying
For the past several months, the White House has been aggressively pressuring Congress to expand the administration’s spying powers and update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). On Friday, President Bush bemoaned that Congress had not “drafted a bill I can sign.” “We’ve worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk,” said Bush. The House surrendered and voted 227 to 183 on Saturday to endorse the administration-backed legislation, which expands the powers of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Bush hailed the bill, which he signed into law yesterday, because it would give the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell “the most immediate tools he needs to defeat the intentions of our enemies.” But in reality, the White House had rejected a narrower compromise bill endorsed by both McConnell and the congressional leadership. As the New York Times noted, this episode was another attempt by the President to “stampede Congress into a completely unnecessary expansion of his power to spy on Americans.” CONGRESS ‘PLAYING WITH HALF A DECK’: Since March, the Bush administration has been building a case for its FISA legislation. But it wasn’t clear until last week why it was pushing so urgently. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) revealed on Fox News that earlier this year, a judge issued a secret ruling concluding “that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States.” Boehner noted that this court order made “a key element of the Bush administration’s wiretapping efforts illegal,” a fact the White House has attempted to conceal from the public and many in Congress. “It clearly shows that Congress has been playing with half a deck,” said Jim Dempsey, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology. “The administration is asking lawmakers to vote on a very important piece of legislation based upon selective declassification of intelligence.” WHITE HOUSE OVERRULED INTEL DIRECTOR: The House congressional leadership quickly worked with McConnell to hammer out legislation fixing the holes created by the secret ruling, which included “three points” that McConnell “said the Bush administration needed.” Yet instead of accepting the legislation, the White House took advantage of the opening “to write its warrantless wiretapping program into law — or, more precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions.” “We had an agreement with DNI McConnell,” said Stacey Bernards, spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), “and then the White House quashed the agreement.” Nevertheless, lawmakers “more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens” caved in to the administration’s demands for increased spying powers. “The only purpose of [the White House-backed] bill is to protect this administration from its own political problems and cynicism, and its own illegal actions it has taken outside the law without any authorization,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who opposed the legislation, on the House floor on Saturday. GONZALES HANDED EXPANDED SPYING POWERS: Provisions of the compromise bill attempted to address the “anachronism” of the 1978 FISA legislation, while imposing oversight on the White House. For example, it would have required audits by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General to check the Attorney General. It would also make the Attorney General “create guidelines to ensure that the government applies for a regular FISA warrant application when the government seeks to spy on a U.S. person.” Yet under the legislation Bush signed into law, Gonzales has “sole authority” to “intercept any communications believed to be from outside the United States (including from Americans overseas) that involve ‘foreign intelligence’ — not just terrorism. … Instead of having the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court ensure that surveillance is being done properly, with monitoring of Americans minimized, that job would be up to the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. The court’s role is reduced to that of rubber stamp.” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) called Gonzales’s expanded power “simply unacceptable,” in light of the fact that he has misled Congress on disputes over the administration’s spying program. On Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who opposed the bill, sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) requesting legislation “as soon as possible after Congress reconvenes” to address the administration’s overreaching on spying.
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The research team that brings you The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org needs fall interns! Click here for more information. “The House approved an energy bill Saturday that would steer the nation toward cleaner fuels and greater conservation, including a requirement that all electric utilities produce 15 percent of their power from wind, solar, biomass or other renewable sources by 2020.” CALIFORNIA: Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertifies Los Angeles County’s electronic voting machines, recognizing the risk of computer fraud. MISSOURI: State program intended to redirect extra, unused prescription drugs to poor residents struggles. IMMIGRATION: “State lawmakers are increasingly stepping into the void created by the failure of Congress to approve sweeping changes to immigration policy,” with many of the changes punitive. THINK PROGRESS: Media revelations from YearlyKos: Bloggers aren’t “chaotic,” carry political “clout.” DAILY KOS: Conservative bloggers create a false controversy: what really happened at the YearlyKos military panel. BELGRAVIA DISPATCH: Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack are definitively “guilty of rose colored glasses.” HUFFINGTON POST: Most conservative presidential candidates dodge questions on use of executive privilege.
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) “stood by his assertion that bombing holy Muslim sites would serve as a good ‘deterrent’ to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from attacking the United States. … ‘This shows that we mean business,’ said Bay Buchanan,” a Tancredo adviser. VERSUS Tom Casey, a deputy spokesman for the State Department, said the congressman’s comments were “reprehensible” and “absolutely crazy.” |
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