Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., defends the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program in an op-ed piece on today’s Opinion pages. Roberts argues that the program is legal and is essential to our national security. “My briefings on this program absolutely convince me it has saved, and will save, American lives,” he writes. Roberts also charges that the criticism of the program by Democrats has been politically motivated, and says that his support of it hasn’t been partisan, as many have alleged. “My actions are not a partisan defense of the president, but are to protect the authority this president, and future presidents, must have to safeguard our nation,” he says.
Roberts concludes: “I will continue to be an advocate for this and other constitutional tools our intelligence community needs to stop national security threats before they get to our shores.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
- Rage on Open thread 11/22
- cosmos_originally on Open thread 11/22
- Chas on Open thread 11/22
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/22
- Boxlock20 on Open thread 11/22
- satatom on Open thread 11/22
- JimJohnson on Open thread 11/22
59 Comments
Instead of saying it is legal and needed for the fight against terrorism. I sure wish they would just say why it was need to go around the law? To the common person 72 hours and going to a secret court seem reasonable.Everyone does agree that the terrorists need to be watched and detected. That is not what the objection is to. We just can not understand the need to do it illegally? Fox news has been chanting it every Sunday that the majority want the terrorists spied on. So the majority agree with the illegal spying. Well they have been half right in that.
I am surprised that Patty had time to give his opinion, give that his lips are glued to Bush’s butt. I guess the constitution is just a piece of paper to him.
There is proof that the government used the NSA wiretapping to spy on attorneys talking to their clients.
Is this really where we as a country should be going?
I found the link to the evidence I mentioned above.
Question. If the NSA are wiretapping attorneys and their clients, would that include people like Fitzgerald?
There needs to be oversight by more than just a handful of carfully chosen people by the president.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030201852.html
I believe in divided government and separation of powers. Senator Roberts evidently does not.
I believe in the Constitutional framework in which laws originates with the Legislative Branch, not the Executive. Senator Roberts evidently does not. He breezily claims that FISA does not cover all Executive intelligence-gathering, a claim casts serious doubt on the Senator’s respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.
I believe in the Constitutionally mandated oversight powers of the Legislative Branch. Senator Roberts does not. Moreover, in his editorial, he claims that his overriding duty as Head of the Intelligence Committee is to ensure that Senate oversight does not hamper the Administration’s gathering of intelligence. I beg your pardon?
Regarding the claim that American intelligence capabilities have never been used to spy domestically, the Senator is surely aware of the announcement by Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Scott McClellan, White House press secretary, that the government might have spied on American citizens domestically.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/22/MNGOHGBM9N1.DTL
Senator Roberts, do you defer to the Constitution, which you have sworn to uphold, or do you defer to the Executive? You cannot do both.
Senator Roberts, I accuse you of dereliction of your Constitutionally-sworn duties. I call for you to do the right thing and to resign immediately.
You are barking up the wrong tree if you EVER expect one of our elected officials to do the right thing.
Cheers and peace to all of God’s creatures!
Ian, indeed. But I want to go on the record as having demanded it. All the members of the criminal gang will be answerable, and Roberts has been as prominent as anyone.
Why does Senator Roberts insist on helping the President break the law? What makes him think this is O.K.?
I would reluctantly go along with Bushytail’s illegal wire taps if he could be trusted to do what he says and spy on Terrorists. BUT he can’t be trusted, It is the republican culture to do every thing possible to spy on their political oppenents. He can’t be trusted to stick to Terrorists only.
HEY ! You got to read this !
“Roberts breaking from White House”
thinkprogress.org/2006/02/18/real-pat-roberts/
I’ll have to see it to believe it.
So… as long as we are posting links, this one is roll on the floor funny. To me anyway :)
http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=20528
The problems is that everyone who disagrees with this administration, this congress, etc. gets branded as a terrorist lover and treasonist. So I guess that makes us all fair game for domestic spying.
The President did not do anything illegal.
The president exercised his constitutional authority to execute interception of suspected terrorist communications.
End of story.
No matter how much you guys cry and whine about it those facts are not going to change.
Hehehe, Nathan, if you didn’t exist, we leftists would have to invent you.
No matter what the evidence of the scandal d’ jour–Abramoff money man for hire; Jeff Gannon homosexual male prostitute and fake reporter; Armstrong Williams, columnist on Bush’s payroll; the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame; the silencing of Sibel Edmons, intelligence translator who claims 9-11 was practically an inside job; the firing of gov’t officials who accurately predicted the Iraq war’s true cost and who dissented from the “cooked books” version of Bush’s foregone conclusions; the trumped up case for an Iraq War which didn’t even make good nonsense; electronic voting machines that only permit voters to vote for the Republican candidate; election officials who blatently disenfranchise Democrats; “Brownie doing a heckuva job” when New Orleans drown; the 9 trillion dollar national debt; Osama bin Laden uncaught; the anthrax killers at large; Dick Cheney continuing to draw a salary from the company profiting from no-bid contracts in Iraq; Bush friend Ken Lay still unconvicted; and now the illegal spying on American citizens.
And according to Nathan underneath all that smoke, there’s absolutely no fire. Nope, nothing to see here, folks. It’s just those Bush-haters again.
When Clinton lied about his affair, prominent Democrats including Harry Reid and John Kerry voted in favor of censure.
When Bush lies about illegally wiretapping Americans, you say, “it’s not a crime. Bush has never lied. He has never even made a mistake.”
It has been clearly shown that Bush claimed that “all the wiretaps of Americans on American soil were done under warrant.” Then it turns out they weren’t.
What part of that lie do you not understand?
*****
Here’s a few links you won’t see on the op-ed of The Eagle:
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski is the Pentagon whistleblower who recently exposed what she calls a “neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon.” In her 20 year career with the Air Force, she served on the Air Force Staff, Operations Directorate at the Pentagon, and on the staff of the Director of the National Security Agency.
Though a lifelong conservative, Kwiatkowski found herself appalled as the radical wing of the Bush administration, including her superiors in the Pentagon planning department, bulldozed internal dissent, overlooked its own intelligence and relentlessly pushed for confrontation with Iraq. She left the military in March 2003, the same week that troops invaded Iraq. Afterwards, Kwiatkowski started putting her real name on her Web reports and began accepting speaking invitations. “I’m now a soldier for the truth,” she said in a speech at Cal Poly Pomona.
******
In a world exclusive, Al Martin Raw. com has published a news story about a Department of Defense whistleblower who has revealed that a US covert operations team had planted “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs) in Iraq – then “lost” them when the team was killed by so-called “friendly fire.”
The Pentagon whistleblower, Nelda Rogers, is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the Defense Department. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA- military fiasco in Iraq. According to Al Martin Raw. com, “Ms. Rogers is number two in the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. This is a ten-person debriefing unit within the central debriefing office for the Department of Defense.
*****
Zogby poll cites majority support impeachment
A new poll out today by Zogby International cites that a majority of Americans favor impeaching President Bush over the wire tapping of Americans if he wiretapped without a judges approval. The poll found that 52% of respondents agreed with the statement: “If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.”
Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.”
–President George Bush, April 20, 2004, in Buffalo, New York
The President obviously knows the law. The question is, why does he choose to break it by ignoring warrants when following the law by getting them is so easy?
Obviously, he wants to spy on people that he doesn’t think he can get a warrant for . . . hmmm, now who would those people be?
All of you bush-hating, unpatriotic leftists will be going to the gulag! :)
Cheers and peace to all of God’s creatures.
Nathan,
The President does not have the power to enact legislation by fiat, and nor does he have the power to ignore standing law.
Why do you Wingnuts worship the President and Presidential authority? Does it make you feel safe? Relieve you of the burden of thinking and acting independently for yourselves?
What could be more un-American than attributing limitless power to the Chief Executive? He’s a officer of the Constitution–not a sovereign above the law.
ProudLib,”a US covert operations team had planted “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs) in Iraq”
Got some source for that info? I’ve kind of suspected such a thing since no WMD was found, but part of me thinks they wouldn’t have the balls to do that. I’d sure like to follow that little gem up.
Thanks
Actually CF,
The President has the authority to do what the Constitution gives him the authority to do.
Unfortunately you and the rest of the “I hate Bush” people don’t understand Constitutional law or this thing called precident very well.
Never mind, I found it.
I’m a little to worn-out and busy to really participate today. I just wanted to point out that the cartoonist that KFG linked to, Tom Tommorrow (Dan Perkins), was born in Wichita, the same year as me!
Must be something good in this soil. ;-)
The groundwater, on the other hand. . .
Nathan,
The Constitution gives the President no such authority as you claim.
Since you’re the one making the positive claim that the President possesses certain rights, Nathan, you can’t play your usual juvenile game of ’show me.’ Because YOU are making a positive claim, the burden of proof falls on YOU.
Prove the Constitution gives the President a) the authority not to follow existing law, and b) the authority to initiate legislation.
Let’s see you back up your lickspittle toadying to Executive power with an actual argument.
In this link, a NY Times story indicated that the NSA wiretapping may have used a process whereby a huge amount of data is scooped up, but no one person is looked with the degree of scrutiny that is involved with a wire-tap.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40614FA3E550C718DDDAA0894DE404482[sorry those bums at the Times make you pay if an article is very old - this one is dated 03-12-06]
The goal is to identify social networks that look like terrorist cells. A guy from Cleveland who knows this kind of stuff did such an analysis on the 9/11 cell and he was immediately invited to Washington to tell intelligence people about the technology. The Times is speculating that this is the type of data collected in the Bush NSA “wiretaps”. It focuses on connections between nodes/verticies or people, rather than the people themselves or the information that goes on between people.
The theory is that it is intrusive in its volume (much chaff is picked up for relatively little wheat), but the intrusion into an individual person’s communication is minimal unless you are identified as a possible terrorist based on your networking patterns. Hope that makes sense. I have just started looking at this application – it is quite interesting. SNA has applications in how information flows through work groups — at my work place we are interested in seeing if the technology can improve our communication goals (internal and external).
Roberts says lives are being saved, blah blah blah, but doesn’t cite one case or instance to show that the illegal wiretaps have been effective. In fact I have heard experts state just the opposite, that not one terrorist act has been unveiled, or aborted.As for partianship, Roberts article certainly meets the definition.If they have nothing to hide, a thorough investigation should be welcomed and assisted with.
Lets see…
In the US Supreme Court Case (Keith) 1972 and even in the FISA act itself this is the opinion of the court:
“The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that constitutional authority in the case before it. We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power.”
The judicial precident is on Bush’s side.
He did what he deemed necessary to intercept enemy communications during a time of war to protect American lives.
Meanwhile all you crybaby “I irrationally hate Bush” people are out trying to impeach him for it.
Don’t worry. While you go to bed with your irrational hate for Bush he will be protecting you.
Until bush does something about our borders and immigration he is not “protecting” anything! Ask why your hero was in favor of israels “security fence” but came out against a fence on our border with mexico. Why did your hero tell us to be vigilant after 9/11 and then turn around and call us Minuteman volunteers, “vigilantes”?I won’t hold my breath waiting for a response.
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
If you didn’t notice Ian I never respond to you…
Nathan,
Thanks Nathan, I’d just as soon not have bush “on my side”. With “friends” like him I’ve all the greater fear of real enemies.
I did not ask him to protect me. I’ve no irrational fear of Arabs 7,000 miles away despite his best attempts to instill one. An Arab 7,000 miles away probably has a bigger beef with the folks who made bush then I have. But I still have my issues with bushs folks, not any arab.
Shrub is only good at protecting the zionists, haliburton and the tax shelters of his country club buddies!
viva la raza blanco!!
It is not about whether you fear Arabs 7,000 miles away or not.
It is about stopping Arabs 7,000 miles away from flying planes into our buildings and killing Americans at home and abroad.
I want protection FROM Bush, not protection BY him.
DD,
I don’t know where I got the idea but what you wrote jibes with what I was thinking too . . . The NSA is “data mining” vast quantities of calls and e-mails for patterns.
They can’t get warrants because they’re basically monitoring everything they can.
It’s exactly the kind of thing that big federal agencies do instead of actual police work . . . following leads and conducting interviews.
Beats working for a living.
*****
BTW, the 9-11 attackers were here on expired visas, on fake visas. They weren’t investigated by BushCo because he was too busy playing huggy bear and kissy face with his Saudi oil pals.
If any country deserved to get invaded, it was the feudal monarchy that is Arabia, held by a bloody coup d’ etat a few generations back.
Al Qaeda was attacking their repression when it attacked us on 9-11.
The point being we don’t need more intelligence.
We need a President who knows what to do with the intelligence we’ve got . . .
Go watch Fahrenheit 911 Nathan. Do it with an open mind.
If you have something to prove that scary arabs are a bigger threat to me and America than the bush admininistrations use of that boogey man to cover its own evil domestic agenda I’ll read listen to or watch it.
We all know that 1 = 2, and it’s about time the law acknowledged it.
JR,
I have watched Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenhiet 911.
It appears as if you have forgotten the very real terrorist threat… the one that took down 2 buildings, crashed into the pentagon, attacked several embassies, attacked the cole, etc…etc…
It is not a boogey man.
Nathan,
Ever heard of the difference between ‘inherent’ power and ‘plenary’ power? The first means something along the lines of ‘powers specific to branch X of government,’ while the second means ‘absolute’ or ‘unchecked’ power. Contrary to your insistence, and Senator Specter’s insistence this week, the President’s powers with respect to surveillance are inherent and NOT plenary.
This is clear from reading Truong itself, as well as from other precedents. Here’s a link that explains matters.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/13/20331/1414
Takeaway line: the President does NOT have ‘plenary’ powers to ignore the dictates of Congress, or to refuse Congressional oversight. This was settled in 1952 in the Youngstown case.
Judicial precedent is against Bush. He is involved in an unprecedented, unconstitutional power grab, and must be stopped by the Congress. The failure of GOP elected officials to stand up for the Constitution is, frankly, a further sign that they care completely for power, and not at all for the Constitution or the rule of law.
It took some time, but I finally realized the only way I could read Truong in the original (without paying a bundle) was the old-fashioned way: The Federal Reporter and a pocketful of quarters. If you want to sink your teeth into the case, we got it, folks!
I didn’t know Specter had crumbled like that. Maybe I didn’t want to know {goes to hide under the bed. . .}.
What “terrorists?”
Rage,
Yeah, Specter always puts up a bunch of bluster, but in the end he bends over for Uncle Karl, every time.
Shameless whores. You ’small government’ Republicans should be ashamed of yourselves for enabling this Executive power grab.
What justification is there for compromising freedom and privacy for “security”?
bush had the warnings about plans by Bin Laden for a 911 type attack in his hands a month before the fact.
Oh and Nathan? No I have not forgotten the bush administrations negligence that ALLOWED planes to crash into buildings. Nor has it escaped me that the only entity that seemed to ‘gain” anything from those attacks was the bush administration.Big mean scary terrorists have been a magnificent distraction from the real damage bush and company have done to “protect us” from them.
The problem with widescale wiretapping is not unlike the problem of mass torture of “war criminals”. It has been determined that many prisoners at Guantanimo and elsewhere were fraudulently named by bounty-paid Afganis. They were innocent people. Some were tortured.So, one can make an argument to invade the privacy of non-terrrorists, and torture non-combatants, to get to the terrorists. One can make an argument for barbarism. But is that what most Americans WANT?
Mr. Roberts defends NSA’s broad intercepts. Fair enough. So long as the American people can examine all of Mr. Roberts’ emails and phone calls. We can undoubtedly learn a lot from these.And howzabout whenever he meets with lobbyists, having a court reporter transcribing all transactions, and the transcripts are publicly posted?
This notion of, “It’s okay for me to examine your transactions, but you can’t examine mine,” is the basis of plutocracy.
Economists call this information asymmetry. It underlies corporations’ legal ability to publicly publish one set of numbers to shareholders, and privately declare another set of numbers to the IRS. Nevermind that shareholders are the OWNERS of a corporation. Under current American law, it’s legal to give them false information.
It’s okay for the government to give “We the People” false information. This has nothing to do with national security, it has everything to do with making some Americans rich at other Americans’ expense.
Consider Area 51. The feds said that it didn’t exist, while simultaneously illegally closing off open-to-the-public Bureau of Land Management property to the public’s use. But the Soviets flew satellites over the base. Our “enemy” was allowed to know more about Area 51 than American citizens.
During the development of the A-bomb, Americans were ignorant, unless they were working for the Manhattan Project. But the Soviet leaders got the information. If an enemy has money, it can obtain the information it wants. It can pay for the information that average Americans cannot afford. Today, Chinese communist leaders have classified U.S. Government information. It’s all a game, folks. You’re just not invited to play.
Ok I’ve got a story for you. This is a personal anectodal story and I’m sorry I cannot provide any links.Recently my mom-in-law received a letter that was poorly spelled, full of gramatical errors and asked for a check before they could send her winnings from a sweepstakes company.Long story short she fell for it when all the family told her it was a scam. (Yes FBI and police reports have been made). My hubby called FBI agent and asked if they could set up a sting ’cause he still had all the numbers (he had called to check the company out) and was asked if any of the people he had talked to had accents – he replied that all except one had arabic accents and the other had an indian accent. The agent got really really quiet. Hubby asked why she need to know, agent tried to get off the phone. Hubby asked if this was terrorists getting money for further attacks and was told the typical “I can’t confirm or deny” from the FBI agent.
What do you people think??
Well Nathan, here’s “The Rest of The Story” on the Truong Court myth. http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/21/appeals-court-myth
steve,
Indeed: game, set, match. I am looking forward to the next installment of Nathan’s attempt to re-animate this judicial corpse.
Where other folks talk about what a ‘nice kid’ Nathan is, what instead commands my attention are the selective, disingenuous and evasive tactics by which he tries to win arguments. In all of these areas, he’s every bit a contemporary Wingnut apologist / proto-fascist.
ring, ring . . .
Julie: “Hello”
Caller: “Hello, al Queda calling.Ve have mogazine subscriptions, we’d like to seel you. Thes will help us finance an important diplomatic project. Can I put you down as someone willing to help?”
I just thought it would be interesting to share on how terrorist projects were potentially funded. Not everybondy has the Bin Laden money behind them. Not saying that they were actually funding terrorist but according to the FBI they can not confirm nor deny that it is a possibility.
ok, I’ll go put on my tin foil hat now :)
I think I’m going to take to calling him “Senator Sphincter.” I admired him for daring to oppose Bork, but he hasn’t done much I like lately.
Rage,
Specter is a total fucking hack. I’ve detested him since his attack on Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas ‘hearings’. Of late, between caving on Alito and FISA, he’s proven to be the biggest Karl Rove sex toy this side of John McCain.
CF, dont forget lieberman when listing tools
heheh… I totally agree with you about nathan, but you gotta admit, he is the best recruiting tool we have. Reading his arguments and then the backup chorus of wingnuts just illustrates how dangerous they are. I take back every nice thing I ever said about any of them.
heheh again. You know what we call rick santorum in our community is rick scrotum.
Pennsylvania. The land of scrotum and sphincter.
heheheh. Wonder what they call ks?
MacMahon displayed a communication addressed to Samit and FBI headquarters agent Mike Maltbie from a bureau agent in Paris relaying word from French intelligence that Moussaoui was “very dangerous,” had been indoctrinated in radical Islamic Fundamentalism at London’s Finnsbury Park mosque, was “completely devoted” to a variety of radical fundamentalism that Osama bin Laden espoused, and had been to Afghanistan.
SNIP…
But Samit told MacMahon he couldn’t persuade FBI headquarters or the Justice Department to take his fears seriously. No one from Washington called Samit to say this intelligence altered the picture the agent had been painting since Aug. 18 in a running battle with Maltbie and Maltbie’s boss, David Frasca, chief of the (R)adical (F)undamentalist (U)nit (RFU) at headquarters.
They fought over Samit’s desire for a warrant to search Moussaoui’s computer and belongings. Maltbie and Frasca said Samit had not established a link between Moussaoui and terrorists.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/21/ap/national/mainD8GFLTIGA.shtml
*****
Reiteration–we don’t need more intelligence. We need a President that can evaluate the intelligence we’ve got.
Bush incompetence is no justification for me to give up my rights.
PL,
As of today, the ‘bad intelligence’ defense is officially kaput. The second Smoking Gun memo was released, showing that Bush and Blair knew there were no WMD, and strategizing about how to precipitate some incident that could spark a war.
http://nytimes.com/2006/03/27/international/europe/27memo.html?hp&ex=1143522000&en=1a8220fd45b2aca0&ei=5094&partner=homepage
I love the part where Bush suggests painting a U2 spy plane in UN colors in order to provoke the Iraqis into shooting it down. Anyone care for a little Reichstag burning?
So, let’s review: we have a President who lied to get us into a war, and attempted to manufacture false pretenses for the war. And this seems to be OK with all you Wingnuts.
Censure? Nah; why settle? Impeach.
ksfarmgrrl,
Good stuff. Did you hear the tape of Lieberman snivelling about the evil bloggers? Crybaby bitch.
Support Ned!
HEHEHEE CF, do you think they just call kansas “taint”?
CF, you’ve probably seen this already, but nathan may shortly have more to whine about since the supremes are about to shorten bush’s wartime leash.
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2006/03/coronation.html
CF,
I viewed a British TV station video about the transcript from that Bush/Blair meeting about two weeks ago. Add that to “overlooking” Moussaui and the Downing Street Memo that the MSM ignored as much as possible (remember, that was prior to Katrina), and somebody is (or should be) building a case.
Julie,
I’m waiting for the new Spring versions of the tinfoil hats. I’m sure they’ll be stunning. Maybe I’ll get two so I can switch off, depending on the topic.
RD,I understand for the first time in years they will be available in fashion colors. I’m looking for a nice boaters hat or maybe a coolie hat.:)
Intel committee sidelined on wire-tapping
By SHAUN WATERMAN
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
WASHINGTON, March 27 (UPI) — The chairman of the powerful Senate Select Committee on Intelligence believes congressional officials were mistaken to refer a bill dealing with the president’s program of warrantless counter-terrorism surveillance to a rival panel.
“Chairman (Pat) Roberts’s (R-Kan.) strong position is that this decision was incorrect,” said a senior committee staffer, who asked not to be named.
In practice, the decision will limit the input the committee will have on the final shape of legislation.
The Senate Parliamentarian, a little-known but influential official who makes decisions about the legislative procedure for Senate bills, referred the bill — S2455, GOP Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine’s Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006 — to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, after a great deal of behind-the-scenes negotiations, according to other senate aides.
The judiciary committee, which is also working on a very different bill dealing with the program drafted by its Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., plans a hearing Tuesday on the issue.
Judges from the secret court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, will testify. Specter’s proposal would give the court authority over the program — which officials have said monitors communications into and out of the United States where one party to the call is suspected of links to al-Qaida or other terrorist group.
Observers said that because it gives the FISA court this role, the referral of Specter’s bill to the judiciary panel was a relatively straightforward call. But the DeWine bill gives authority and oversight over the program to the intelligence committee, and the decision to refer it elsewhere has left some baffled.
“This is a piece of legislation about an intelligence activity, carried out by an intelligence agency, and where the only group of people fully briefed are members of an intelligence committee sub-committee and we didn’t get referral,” said the intelligence committee staffer.
The sub-committee, announced earlier this month by Roberts, has been fully briefed on the program and has visited the National Security Agency’s Ft. Mead, Md., headquarters, from which it is run. The sub-committee, along with the program it was set up to oversee, would be given legislative approval by the bill, which is co-sponsored by Sens. Chuck Hegel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
A spokesman for DeWine said that the referral was a matter for the parliamentarian and the Senate leadership. “They work with the sponsors, but it is not our decision,” said the senator’s Communications Director Mike Dawson.
The parliamentarian’s office referred press inquiries to the office of the Senate secretary. No one from that office or the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., returned phone calls requesting comment.
In practice, the referral means that members and staff of the intelligence committee will have only a short time to work on whatever proposal emerges from Specter’s panel — 10 days, according to committee staff. And the intelligence committee’s influence over the final shape of the bill the Senate will vote on may also be limited in other ways by the chamber’s arcane parliamentary rules.
And that is significant because some on the intelligence committee — though they would not speak for the record — say important changes need to be made to the DeWine bill.
Most controversially, they believe the bill should authorize the use of this new surveillance tool to protect the country against threats other than terrorism.
The DeWine bill would create a list of terrorist organizations designated by the president. Anyone that the government has probable cause to believe may be “an agent or member … affiliated with … or working in support of” one of those groups is liable to be wiretapped.
“Why restrict it to terrorist groups?” pondered one committee insider. “There are criminal organizations or nation states that might also pose a serious enough threat to warrant inclusion.”
The bill mandates a review of the program by the Attorney General every 45 days, as at present. But some are fretting that the reviews — which require a certification for each wiretap — will create an undue administrative burden.
They argue that the trade-off for the more thorough review process, culminating in a case-by-case certification to the sub-committee by the Attorney general — ought to be more time between reviews.
Finally, some believe that the bill raises the bar too high for deciding who can be tapped. Currently, officials have said that the president’s program authorizes surveillance on those they have “a reasonable basis to believe” might be working for or with terrorists. The bill would raise that test to the “probable cause.”