Bush Warns House on Surveillance
By BRIAN KNOWLTON | March 13, 2008
WASHINGTON — With the House moving toward a vote on electronic surveillance legislation that the White House has said falls far short of its requirements, President Bush warned legislators strongly Thursday morning against passing what he called “a partisan bill that will undermine American security.”
In clear defiance of the White House, the proposal from House Democratic leaders would not give retroactive legal protection to the phone companies that helped in the National Security Agency program of warrantless wiretapping. Mr. Bush also threatened to veto any such measure, should it reach his desk.
The Senate last month passed a bill that did provide such protection and also broadened government eavesdropping powers.
Administration officials say that the Democrats know that the House version would face probable defeat in the Senate. But House Democratic leaders have shown themselves more ready than in the past for a fight on national security.
Using tough language on a subject on which he has been persistent and unswerving, Mr. Bush warned House members that “they should not leave for Easter recess without getting the Senate bill to my desk.”
He argued that failure to pass the Senate language would make it harder to detect emerging terrorist threats.
“Voting for this bill would make our country less safe,” Mr. Bush said. “Congress should stop playing politics with the past and focus on helping us prevent attacks in the future.”
Democrats have accused the president of fear-mongering, saying surveillance can be monitored more carefully without losing its effectiveness.
Mr. Bush also argued again that the House Democrats’ approach would unfairly expose the phone companies to lawsuits that could potentially be enormously expensive.
“House leaders simply adopted the position that class-action trial lawyers are taking in the multibillion law suits they have filed” against the phone companies, he said. This “would undermine the private sector’s willingness to cooperate with the intelligence community, cooperation that is essential to protecting our country from harm.”
Instead of giving the companies blanket immunity, as the Senate would do, the House proposal was understood to give the federal courts special authorization to hear classified evidence and decide whether the phone companies should be held liable.
But the president said that this approach “could reopen dangerous intelligence gaps by putting in place a cumbersome court approval process that would make it harder to collect intelligence on foreign terrorists” and could lead, he said, to disclosure of state secrets.
“Their partisan legislation would extend protections we enjoy as Americans to foreign terrorists overseas,” Mr. Bush said.
In a statement yesterday, 19 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee questioned the administration’s arguments.
“We have concluded that the administration has not established a valid and credible case justifying the extraordinary action of Congress enacting blanket retroactive immunity as set forth in the Senate bill,” they said.
Some 40 lawsuits are pending in federal courts, charging that by cooperating with the eavesdropping program put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the phone companies violated their responsibilities to customers and federal privacy laws.
Showing posts with label wiretapping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wiretapping. Show all posts
NYT : Bush Warns House on Surveillance
Friday, March 14, 2008
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by Winter Patriot
on Friday, March 14, 2008
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NYT : The Wiretap This Time
Monday, October 29, 2007
The Wiretap This Time
By STUDS TERKEL | October 29, 2007
EARLIER this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet interceptions of the electronic communications of people in the United States. They also agreed to “immunize” American telephone companies from lawsuits charging that after 9/11 some companies collaborated with the government to violate the Constitution and existing federal law. I am a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, and I hope Congress thinks carefully before denying me, and millions of other Americans, our day in court.
During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that politically active Americans view their relationship with government. In 1920, during my youth, I recall the Palmer raids in which more than 10,000 people were rounded up, most because they were members of particular labor unions or belonged to groups that advocated change in American domestic or foreign policy. Unrestrained surveillance was used to further the investigations leading to these detentions, and the Bureau of Investigation — the forerunner to the F.B.I. — eventually created a database on the activities of individuals. This activity continued through the Red Scare of the period.
In the 1950s, during the sad period known as the McCarthy era, one’s political beliefs again served as a rationale for government monitoring. Individual corporations and entire industries were coerced by government leaders into informing on individuals and barring their ability to earn a living.
I was among those blacklisted for my political beliefs. My crime? I had signed petitions. Lots of them. I had signed on in opposition to Jim Crow laws and poll taxes and in favor of rent control and pacifism. Because the petitions were thought to be Communist-inspired, I lost my ability to work in television and radio after refusing to say that I had been “duped” into signing my name to these causes.
By the 1960s, the inequities in civil rights and the debate over the Vietnam war spurred social justice movements. The government’s response? More surveillance. In the name of national security, the F.B.I. conducted warrantless wiretaps of political activists, journalists, former White House staff members and even a member of Congress.
Then things changed. In 1975, the hearings led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho revealed the scope of government surveillance of private citizens and lawful organizations. As Americans saw the damage, they reached a consensus that this unrestrained surveillance had a corrosive impact on us all.
In 1978, with broad public support, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which placed national security investigations, including wiretapping, under a system of warrants approved by a special court. The law was not perfect, but as a result of its enactment and a series of subsequent federal laws, a generation of Americans has come to adulthood protected by a legal structure and a social compact making clear that government will not engage in unbridled, dragnet seizure of electronic communications.
The Bush administration, however, tore apart that carefully devised legal structure and social compact. To make matters worse, after its intrusive programs were exposed, the White House and the Senate Intelligence Committee proposed a bill that legitimized blanket wiretapping without individual warrants. The legislation directly conflicts with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, requiring the government to obtain a warrant before reading the e-mail messages or listening to the telephone calls of its citizens, and to state with particularity where it intends to search and what it expects to find.
Compounding these wrongs, Congress is moving in a haphazard fashion to provide a “get out of jail free card” to the telephone companies that violated the rights of their subscribers. Some in Congress argue that this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a time of crisis. But it’s impossible for Congress to know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government will use the private information it received from them.
And it is not as though the telecommunications companies did not know that their actions were illegal. Judge Vaughn Walker of federal district court in San Francisco, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, noted that in an opinion in one of the immunity provision lawsuits the “very action in question has previously been held unlawful.”
I have observed and written about American life for some time. In truth, nothing much surprises me anymore. But I always feel uplifted by this: Given the facts and an opportunity to act, the body politic generally does the right thing. By revealing the truth in a public forum, the American people will have the facts to play their historic, heroic role in putting our nation back on the path toward freedom. That is why we deserve our day in court.
Studs Terkel is the author of the forthcoming “Touch and Go: A Memoir.”
By STUDS TERKEL | October 29, 2007
EARLIER this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet interceptions of the electronic communications of people in the United States. They also agreed to “immunize” American telephone companies from lawsuits charging that after 9/11 some companies collaborated with the government to violate the Constitution and existing federal law. I am a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, and I hope Congress thinks carefully before denying me, and millions of other Americans, our day in court.
During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that politically active Americans view their relationship with government. In 1920, during my youth, I recall the Palmer raids in which more than 10,000 people were rounded up, most because they were members of particular labor unions or belonged to groups that advocated change in American domestic or foreign policy. Unrestrained surveillance was used to further the investigations leading to these detentions, and the Bureau of Investigation — the forerunner to the F.B.I. — eventually created a database on the activities of individuals. This activity continued through the Red Scare of the period.
In the 1950s, during the sad period known as the McCarthy era, one’s political beliefs again served as a rationale for government monitoring. Individual corporations and entire industries were coerced by government leaders into informing on individuals and barring their ability to earn a living.
I was among those blacklisted for my political beliefs. My crime? I had signed petitions. Lots of them. I had signed on in opposition to Jim Crow laws and poll taxes and in favor of rent control and pacifism. Because the petitions were thought to be Communist-inspired, I lost my ability to work in television and radio after refusing to say that I had been “duped” into signing my name to these causes.
By the 1960s, the inequities in civil rights and the debate over the Vietnam war spurred social justice movements. The government’s response? More surveillance. In the name of national security, the F.B.I. conducted warrantless wiretaps of political activists, journalists, former White House staff members and even a member of Congress.
Then things changed. In 1975, the hearings led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho revealed the scope of government surveillance of private citizens and lawful organizations. As Americans saw the damage, they reached a consensus that this unrestrained surveillance had a corrosive impact on us all.
In 1978, with broad public support, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which placed national security investigations, including wiretapping, under a system of warrants approved by a special court. The law was not perfect, but as a result of its enactment and a series of subsequent federal laws, a generation of Americans has come to adulthood protected by a legal structure and a social compact making clear that government will not engage in unbridled, dragnet seizure of electronic communications.
The Bush administration, however, tore apart that carefully devised legal structure and social compact. To make matters worse, after its intrusive programs were exposed, the White House and the Senate Intelligence Committee proposed a bill that legitimized blanket wiretapping without individual warrants. The legislation directly conflicts with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, requiring the government to obtain a warrant before reading the e-mail messages or listening to the telephone calls of its citizens, and to state with particularity where it intends to search and what it expects to find.
Compounding these wrongs, Congress is moving in a haphazard fashion to provide a “get out of jail free card” to the telephone companies that violated the rights of their subscribers. Some in Congress argue that this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a time of crisis. But it’s impossible for Congress to know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government will use the private information it received from them.
And it is not as though the telecommunications companies did not know that their actions were illegal. Judge Vaughn Walker of federal district court in San Francisco, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, noted that in an opinion in one of the immunity provision lawsuits the “very action in question has previously been held unlawful.”
I have observed and written about American life for some time. In truth, nothing much surprises me anymore. But I always feel uplifted by this: Given the facts and an opportunity to act, the body politic generally does the right thing. By revealing the truth in a public forum, the American people will have the facts to play their historic, heroic role in putting our nation back on the path toward freedom. That is why we deserve our day in court.
Studs Terkel is the author of the forthcoming “Touch and Go: A Memoir.”
IHT : U.S. Democrats seem ready to extend wiretap powers
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
U.S. Democrats seem ready to extend wiretap powers
By Eric Lichtblau and Carl Hulse | October 8, 2007
WASHINGTON: Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.
Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess. Some Democratic officials concede that they may not come up with enough votes to stop approval.
As the debate over the eavesdropping powers of the National Security Agency begins anew this week, the emerging measures reflect the reality confronting the Democrats.
Although willing to oppose the White House on the Iraq war, they remain nervous that they will be called soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on gathering intelligence.
A Democratic bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for NSA eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months.
In an acknowledgment of concerns over civil liberties, the bill would require a more active role by the special foreign intelligence court that oversees the interception of foreign-based communications by the security agency.
A competing proposal in the Senate, still being drafted, may be even closer in line with the administration plan, with the possibility of including retroactive immunity for telecommunications utilities that participated in the once-secret program to eavesdrop without court warrants.
No one is willing to predict with certainty how the question will play out. Some congressional officials and others monitoring the debate said the final result might not be much different from the result in August, despite the Democrats' insistence that they would not let stand the extension of the powers.
"Many members continue to fear that if they don't support whatever the president asks for, they'll be perceived as soft on terrorism," said William Banks, a professor who specializes in terrorism and national security law at Syracuse University and who has written extensively on U.S. wiretapping laws.
The August bill, known as the Protect America Act, was approved in the final hours before Congress went on its summer recess after heated warnings from the administration that legal loopholes in wiretapping coverage had left the country vulnerable to another terrorist attack. The measure significantly reduced the role of the foreign intelligence court and broadened the security agency's ability to listen to foreign-based communications without court warrants.
"We want the statute made permanent," a spokesman for the Justice Department, Dean Boyd, said Monday. "We view this as a healthy debate. We also view it as an opportunity to inform Congress and the public that we can use these authorities responsibly. We're going to go forward and look at any proposals that come forth. But we'll look at them very carefully to make sure they don't have any consequences that hamper our abilities to protect the country."
House Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the bill in August and said the administration had been forced them into a corner.
As Congress takes up the new bills, a senior Democratic aide said, House leaders are working hard to ensure that the administration does not succeed in pushing through a bill that would make permanent all the powers it secured in August.
"That's what we're trying to avoid," the aide said. "We have that concern too."
The bill to be proposed on Tuesday by the Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees would impose more controls over the powers of security agency, including quarterly audits by the Justice Department inspector general. The measure would also give the foreign intelligence court a role in approving, in advance, "basket" or "umbrella" warrants for bundles of overseas communications, a congressional official said.
"We are giving the NSA what it legitimately needs for national security but with far more limitations and protections than are in the Protect America Act," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California.
Perhaps most important in the eyes of Democratic supporters, the House bill would not give retroactive immunity to the telecommunications utilities that participated in the eavesdropping. That has been a top priority of the administration. The temporary measure gave the utilities immunity for future acts, but not past deeds.
Private groups are trying to prove in federal court that the utilities violated the law by participating in the program.
A former senior Justice Department lawyer, Jack Goldsmith, seemed to bolster their case last week when he told Congress that the program was a "legal mess" and strongly suggested that it was illegal.
The House bill would also require the administration to disclose details of the program. Democrats say they plan to push the administration to turn over internal documents laying out the legal rationale for the program, something the administration has refused to do.
In the Senate, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, John Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, is working with his Republican counterpart, Christopher Bond of Missouri, a main proponent of the August plan, to come up with a compromise.
Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for Rockefeller, said that retroactive immunity for the utilities was "under discussion" but that no final proposal had been developed.
The immunity issue may prove to be the crucial sticking point between whatever proposals the House and Senate ultimately pass. Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who was among the harshest critics of the temporary bill, said in an interview he would vigorously oppose any effort to grant retroactive legal protection to telecommunications utilities.
"There is heavy pressure on the immunity, and we should not cave an inch on that," Nadler said.
Nadler said that he was worried the Senate would give too much ground to the administration in its proposal, but that he was satisfied with the bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House.
"It is not perfect, but it is a good bill," he said. "It makes huge improvements in the current law. In some respects it is better than the old FISA law," a reference to the foreign intelligence court.
Civil liberties advocates and others who met House officials on Monday on the proposed bill agreed that it was an improvement over the August plan but were less charitable in their overall assessment.
'This still authorizes the interception of Americans' international communications without a warrant in far too many instances, and without adequate civil liberties protections," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, who was in the group that met House officials.
Caroline Frederickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she was troubled by the Democrats' acceptance of broad, blanket warrants for the security agency rather than the individualized warrants traditionally required by the intelligence court.
"The Democratic leadership, philosophically, is with us," Frederickson said. "But we need to help them realize the political case, which is that Democrats will not be in danger if they don't reauthorize this Protect America Act. They're nervous.
"There's a 'keep the majority' mentality, which is understandable," she said, "But we think they're putting themselves in more danger by not standing on principle."
By Eric Lichtblau and Carl Hulse | October 8, 2007
WASHINGTON: Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.
Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess. Some Democratic officials concede that they may not come up with enough votes to stop approval.
As the debate over the eavesdropping powers of the National Security Agency begins anew this week, the emerging measures reflect the reality confronting the Democrats.
Although willing to oppose the White House on the Iraq war, they remain nervous that they will be called soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on gathering intelligence.
A Democratic bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for NSA eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months.
In an acknowledgment of concerns over civil liberties, the bill would require a more active role by the special foreign intelligence court that oversees the interception of foreign-based communications by the security agency.
A competing proposal in the Senate, still being drafted, may be even closer in line with the administration plan, with the possibility of including retroactive immunity for telecommunications utilities that participated in the once-secret program to eavesdrop without court warrants.
No one is willing to predict with certainty how the question will play out. Some congressional officials and others monitoring the debate said the final result might not be much different from the result in August, despite the Democrats' insistence that they would not let stand the extension of the powers.
"Many members continue to fear that if they don't support whatever the president asks for, they'll be perceived as soft on terrorism," said William Banks, a professor who specializes in terrorism and national security law at Syracuse University and who has written extensively on U.S. wiretapping laws.
The August bill, known as the Protect America Act, was approved in the final hours before Congress went on its summer recess after heated warnings from the administration that legal loopholes in wiretapping coverage had left the country vulnerable to another terrorist attack. The measure significantly reduced the role of the foreign intelligence court and broadened the security agency's ability to listen to foreign-based communications without court warrants.
"We want the statute made permanent," a spokesman for the Justice Department, Dean Boyd, said Monday. "We view this as a healthy debate. We also view it as an opportunity to inform Congress and the public that we can use these authorities responsibly. We're going to go forward and look at any proposals that come forth. But we'll look at them very carefully to make sure they don't have any consequences that hamper our abilities to protect the country."
House Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the bill in August and said the administration had been forced them into a corner.
As Congress takes up the new bills, a senior Democratic aide said, House leaders are working hard to ensure that the administration does not succeed in pushing through a bill that would make permanent all the powers it secured in August.
"That's what we're trying to avoid," the aide said. "We have that concern too."
The bill to be proposed on Tuesday by the Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees would impose more controls over the powers of security agency, including quarterly audits by the Justice Department inspector general. The measure would also give the foreign intelligence court a role in approving, in advance, "basket" or "umbrella" warrants for bundles of overseas communications, a congressional official said.
"We are giving the NSA what it legitimately needs for national security but with far more limitations and protections than are in the Protect America Act," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California.
Perhaps most important in the eyes of Democratic supporters, the House bill would not give retroactive immunity to the telecommunications utilities that participated in the eavesdropping. That has been a top priority of the administration. The temporary measure gave the utilities immunity for future acts, but not past deeds.
Private groups are trying to prove in federal court that the utilities violated the law by participating in the program.
A former senior Justice Department lawyer, Jack Goldsmith, seemed to bolster their case last week when he told Congress that the program was a "legal mess" and strongly suggested that it was illegal.
The House bill would also require the administration to disclose details of the program. Democrats say they plan to push the administration to turn over internal documents laying out the legal rationale for the program, something the administration has refused to do.
In the Senate, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, John Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, is working with his Republican counterpart, Christopher Bond of Missouri, a main proponent of the August plan, to come up with a compromise.
Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for Rockefeller, said that retroactive immunity for the utilities was "under discussion" but that no final proposal had been developed.
The immunity issue may prove to be the crucial sticking point between whatever proposals the House and Senate ultimately pass. Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who was among the harshest critics of the temporary bill, said in an interview he would vigorously oppose any effort to grant retroactive legal protection to telecommunications utilities.
"There is heavy pressure on the immunity, and we should not cave an inch on that," Nadler said.
Nadler said that he was worried the Senate would give too much ground to the administration in its proposal, but that he was satisfied with the bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House.
"It is not perfect, but it is a good bill," he said. "It makes huge improvements in the current law. In some respects it is better than the old FISA law," a reference to the foreign intelligence court.
Civil liberties advocates and others who met House officials on Monday on the proposed bill agreed that it was an improvement over the August plan but were less charitable in their overall assessment.
'This still authorizes the interception of Americans' international communications without a warrant in far too many instances, and without adequate civil liberties protections," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, who was in the group that met House officials.
Caroline Frederickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she was troubled by the Democrats' acceptance of broad, blanket warrants for the security agency rather than the individualized warrants traditionally required by the intelligence court.
"The Democratic leadership, philosophically, is with us," Frederickson said. "But we need to help them realize the political case, which is that Democrats will not be in danger if they don't reauthorize this Protect America Act. They're nervous.
"There's a 'keep the majority' mentality, which is understandable," she said, "But we think they're putting themselves in more danger by not standing on principle."
Filed under
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on Tuesday, October 09, 2007
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El Paso Times : Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence surveillance act
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence surveillance act
By Chris Roberts | El Paso Times | August 22, 2007
The following is the transcript of a question and answer session with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.
Question: How much has President Bush or members of his administration formed your response to the FISA debate?
Answer: Not at all. When I came back in, remember my previous assignment was director of the NSA, so this was an area I have known a little bit about. So I came back in. I was nominated the first week of January. The administration had made a decision to put the terrorist surveillance program into the FISA court. I think that happened the 7th of Jan. So as I come in the door and I'm prepping for the hearings, this sort of all happened. So the first thing I want to know is what's this program and what's the background and I was pretty surprised at what I learned. First off, the issue was the technology had changed and we had worked ourselves into a position that we were focusing on foreign terrorist communications, and this was a terrorist foreigner in a foreign country. The issue was international communications are on a wire so all of a sudden we were in a position because of the wording in the law that we had to have a warrant to do that. So the most important thing to capture is that it's a foreigner in a foreign country, required to get a warrant. Now if it were wireless, we would not be required to get a warrant. Plus we were limited in what we were doing to terrorism only and the last time I checked we had a mission called foreign intelligence, which should be construed to mean anything of a foreign intelligence interest, North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, military development and it goes on and on and on. So when I engaged with the administration, I said we've gotten ourselves into a position here where we need to clarify, so the FISA issue had been debated and legislation had been passed in the house in 2006, did not pass the Senate. Two bills were introduced in the Senate, I don't know if it was co-sponsorship or two different bills, but Sen. (Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) had a bill and Sen. Specter had a bill and it may have been the same bill, I don't know, but the point is a lot of debate, a lot of dialogue. So, it was submitted to the FISA court and the first ruling in the FISA court was what we needed to do we could do with an approval process that was at a summary level and that was OK, we stayed in business and we're doing our mission. Well in the FISA process, you may or may not be aware ...
Q: When you say summary level, do you mean the FISA court?
A: The FISA court. The FISA court ruled presented the program to them and they said the program is what you say it is and it's appropriate and it's legitimate, it's not an issue and was had approval. But the FISA process has a renewal. It comes up every so many days and there are 11 FISA judges. So the second judge looked at the same data and said well wait a minute I interpret the law, which is the FISA law, differently. And it came down to, if it's on a wire and it's foreign in a foreign country, you have to have a warrant and so we found ourselves in a position of actually losing ground because it was the first review was less capability, we got a stay and that took us to the 31st of May. After the 31st of May we were in extremis because now we have significantly less capability. And meantime, the community, before I came back, had been working on a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist threat to the homeland. And the key elements of the terrorist threat to the homeland, there were four key elements, a resilient determined adversary with senior leadership willing to die for the cause, requiring a place to train and develop, think of it as safe haven, they had discovered that in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now the Pakistani government is pushing and pressing and attempting to do something about it, but by and large they have areas of safe haven. So leadership that can adapt, safe haven, intermediate leadership, these are think of them as trainers, facilitators, operational control guys. And the fourth part is recruits. They have them, they've taken them. This area is referred to as the FATA, federally administered tribal areas, they have the recruits and now the objective is to get them into the United States for mass casualties to conduct terrorist operations to achieve mass casualties. All of those four parts have been carried out except the fourth. They have em, but they haven't been successful. One of the major tools for us to keep them out is the FISA program, a significant tool and we're going the wrong direction. So, for me it was extremis to start talking not only to the administration, but to members of the hill. So from June until the bill was passed, I think I talked to probably 260 members, senators and congressmen. We submitted the bill in April, had an open hearing 1 May, we had a closed hearing in May, I don't remember the exact date. Chairman (U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas) had two hearings and I had a chance to brief the judiciary committee in the house, the intelligence committee in the house and I just mentioned the Senate, did not brief the full judiciary committee in the Senate, but I did meet with Sen. (Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.) and Sen. (Arlen Specter, R-Pa.), and I did have an opportunity on the Senate side, they have a tradition there of every quarter they invite the director of national intelligence in to talk to them update them on topics of interest. And that happened in (June 27). Well what they wanted to hear about was Iraq and Afghanistan and for whatever reason, I'm giving them my review and they ask questions in the order in which they arrive in the room. The second question was on FISA, so it gave me an opportunity to, here I am worrying about this problem and I have 41 senators and I said several things. The current threat is increasing, I'm worried about it. Our capability is decreasing and let me explain the problem.
Q: Can't you get the warrant after the fact?
A: The issue is volume and time. Think about foreign intelligence. What it presented me with an opportunity is to make the case for something current, but what I was really also trying to put a strong emphasis on is the need to do foreign intelligence in any context. My argument was that the intelligence community should not be restricted when we are conducting foreign surveillance against a foreigner in a foreign country, just by dint of the fact that it happened to touch a wire. We haven't done that in wireless for years.
Q: So you end up with people tied up doing paperwork?
A: It takes about 200 man hours to do one telephone number. Think about it from the judges standpoint. Well, is this foreign intelligence? Well how do you know it's foreign intelligence? Well what does Abdul calling Mohammed mean, and how do I interpret that? So, it's a very complex process, so now, I've got people speaking Urdu and Farsi and, you know, whatever, Arabic, pull them off the line have them go through this process to justify what it is they know and why and so on. And now you've got to write it all up and it goes through the signature process, take it through (the Justice Department), and take it down to the FISA court. So all that process is about 200 man hours for one number. We're going backwards, we couldn't keep up. So the issue was ...
Q: How many calls? Thousands?
A: Don't want to go there. Just think, lots. Too many. Now the second part of the issue was under the president's program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us. Because if you're going to get access you've got to have a partner and they were being sued. Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies. So my position was we have to provide liability protection to these private sector entities. So that was part of the request. So we went through that and we argued it. Some wanted to limit us to terrorism. My argument was, wait a minute, why would I want to limit it to terrorism. It may be that terrorists are achieving weapons of mass destruction, the only way I would know that is if I'm doing foreign intelligence by who might be providing a weapon of mass destruction.
Q: And this is still all foreign to foreign communication?
A: All foreign to foreign. So, in the final analysis, I was after three points, no warrant for a foreigner overseas, a foreign intelligence target located overseas, liability protection for the private sector and the third point was we must be required to have a warrant for surveillance against a U.S. person. And when I say U.S. person I want to make sure you capture what that means. That does not mean citizen. That means a foreigner, who is here, we still have to have a warrant because he's here. My view is that that's the right check and balances and it's the right protection for the country and lets us still do our mission for protection of the country. And we're trying to fend off foreign threats.
Q: So are you satisfied with it the way it is now?
A: I am. The issue that we did not address, which has to be addressed is the liability protection for the private sector now is proscriptive, meaning going forward. We've got a retroactive problem. When I went through and briefed the various senators and congressmen, the issue was alright, look, we don't want to work that right now, it's too hard because we want to find out about some issues of the past. So what I recommended to the administration is, 'Let's take that off the table for now and take it up when Congress reconvenes in September.'
Q: With an eye toward the six-month review?
A: No, the retroactive liability protection has got to be addressed.
Q: And that's not in the current law?
A: It is not. Now people have said that I negotiated in bad faith, or I did not keep my word or whatever...
Q: That you had an agenda that you weren't honest about.
A: I'll give you the facts from my point of view. When I checked on board I had my discussion with the president. I'm an apolitical figure. I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat. I have voted for both. My job is as a professional to try to do this job the best way I can in terms of, from the intelligence community, protect the nation. So I made my argument that we should have the ability to do surveillance the same way we've done it for the past 50 years and not be inhibited when it's a foreigner in a foreign country. The president's guidance to me early in the process, was, 'You've got the experience. I trust your judgement. You make the right call. There's no pressure from anybody here to tell you how to do it. He did that early. He revisited with me in June. He did it again in July and he said it publicly on Friday before the bill was passed. We were at the FBI, it's an annual thing, we go to the FBI and do a homeland security kind of update. So he came out at noon and said, 'I'm requesting that Congress pass this bill. It's essential. Do it before you go on recess. I'm depending on Mike McConnell's recommendations. And that was the total sum and substance of the guidance and the involvement from the White House with regard to how I should make the call. Now, as we negotiated, we started with 66 pages, were trying to get everything cleaned up at once. When I reduced it to my three points, we went from 66 pages to 11. Now, this is a very, very complex bill. I had a team of 20 lawyers working. You can change a word in a paragraph and end up with some major catastrophe down in paragraph 27, subsection 2c, to shut yourself down, you'll be out of business. So when we send up our 11 pages, we had a lot of help in making sure we got it just right so it would come back and we'd say wait a minute we can't live with this or one of the lawyers would say, 'Wait we tried that, it won't work, here's the problem.' So we kept going back and forth, so we sent up a version like Monday, we sent up a version on Wednesday, we sent up a version on Thursday. The House leadership, or the Democratic leadership on Thursday took that bill and we talked about it. And my response was there are some things I can't live with in this bill and they said alright we're going to fix them. Now, here's the issue. I never then had a chance to read it for the fix because, again, it's so complex, if you change a word or phrase, or even a paragraph reference, you can cause unintended ...
Q: You have to make sure it's all consistent?
A: Right. So I can't agree to it until it's in writing and my 20 lawyers, who have been doing this for two years, can work through it. So in the final analysis, I was put in the position of making a call on something I hadn't read. So when it came down to crunch time, we got a copy and it had some of the offending language back in it. So I said, 'I can't support it.' And it played out in the House the way it played out in the House. Meantime on the Senate side, there were two versions being looked at. The Wednesday version and the Thursday version. And one side took one version and the other side took the other version. The Thursday version, we had some help, and I didn't get a chance to review it. So now, it's Friday night, the Senate's voting. They were having their debate and I still had not had a chance to review it. So, I walked over, I was up visiting some senators trying to explain some of the background. So I walked over to the chamber and as I walked into the office just off the chamber, it's the vice president's office, somebody gave me a copy. So I looked at the version and said, 'Can't do it. The same language was back in there.'
Q: What was it?
A: Just let me leave it, not too much detail, there were things with regard to our authorities some language around minimization. So it put us in an untenable position. So then I had another version to take a look at, which was our Wednesday version, which basically was unchanged. So I said, well certainly, I'm going to support that Wednesday version. So that's what I said and the vote happened in the Senate and that was on Friday. So now it rolled to the House on Saturday. They took up the bill, they had a spirited debate, my name was invoked several times, not in a favorable light in some cases. (laughs) And they took a vote and it passed 226 to 182, I think. So it's law. The president signed it on Sunday and here we are.
Q: That's far from unanimous. There's obviously going to be more debate on this.
A: There are a couple of issues to just be sensitive to. There's a claim of reverse targeting. Now what that means is we would target somebody in a foreign country who is calling into the United States and our intent is to not go after the bad guy, but to listen to somebody in the United States. That's not legal, it's, it would be a breach of the Fourth Amendment. You can go to jail for that sort of thing. And If a foreign bad guy is calling into the United States, if there's a need to have a warrant, for the person in the United States, you just get a warrant. And so if a terrorist calls in and it's another terrorist, I think the American public would want us to do surveillance of that U.S. person in this case. So we would just get a warrant and do that. It's a manageable thing. On the U.S. persons side it's 100 or less. And then the foreign side, it's in the thousands. Now there's a sense that we're doing massive data mining. In fact, what we're doing is surgical. A telephone number is surgical. So, if you know what number, you can select it out. So that's, we've got a lot of territory to make up with people believing that we're doing things we're not doing.
Q: Even if it's perception, how do you deal with that? You have to do public relations, I assume.
A: Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. And you give them the facts the best you can. Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they're using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Q. So you're saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?
A. That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it's a democratic process and sunshine's a good thing. We need to have the debate. The reason that the FISA law was passed in 1978 was an arrangement was worked out between the Congress and the administration, we did not want to allow this community to conduct surveillance, electronic surveillance, of Americans for foreign intelligence unless you had a warrant, so that was required. So there was no warrant required for a foreign target in a foreign land. And so we are trying to get back to what was the intention of '78. Now because of the claim, counterclaim, mistrust, suspicion, the only way you could make any progress was to have this debate in an open way.
Q. So you don't think there was an alternative way to do this?
A. There may have been an alternative way, but we are where are ...
Q. A better way, I should say.
A. All of my briefs initially were very classified. But it became apparent that we were not going to be able to carry the day if we don't talk to more people.
Q. Some might say that's the price you pay for living in a free society. Do you think that this is necessary that these Americans die?
A. We could have gotten there a different way. We conducted intelligence since World War II and we've maintained a sensitivity as far as sources and methods. It's basically a sources and methods argument. If you don't protect sources and methods then those you target will choose alternative means, different paths. As it is today al-Qaida in Iraq is targeting Americans, specifically the coalition. There are activities supported by other nations to import electronic, or explosively formed projectiles, to do these roadside attacks and what we know about that is often out of very sensitive sources and methods. So the more public it is, then they take it away from us. So that's the tradeoff.
DIVERSITY IN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
Q: I wanted to ask you about the diversity question. This has major ramifications here, we have this center of excellence program that's recruiting high school kids, many of whom wouldn't qualify if first generation American citizens weren't allowed.
A: So you agree with me?
Q: It does sound like something that would benefit this area that would also allow you to get people from here who are bicultural and have an openness to seeing things ...
A: You're talking about Hispanics?
Q: Yes.
A: Hispanics are probably the most under-represented group if you think of America, what the ethic makeup of America, Hispanics are the most under-represented group in my community. Now, that said, and should increase that Hispanic population and programs like this will do that. That's why the outreach. But also we need, particularly with the current problem of terrorism, we need to have speakers of Urdu and Farsi and Arabic and people from those cultures that understand the issues of tribes and clans and all the things that go with understanding that part of the world. Varying religions and so on. Because it is, it's almost impossible, I've had the chance to live in the Middle East for years, I've studied it for years, it's impossible to understand it without having some feel for the culture and so on. So while I'm all for increasing the diversity along the lines we talked about, I'm also very much in favor of first generation Americans from the countries that are causing issues and problems.
Q: What is the status of that program.
A: It is not in statue. It is not in policy. It has been habit. So we've stated, as a matter of policy, that we're not going to abide by those habits.
Q: And that's already the case?
A: Yes, and are we making progress? Not fast enough, but we will make progress over time.
Q: How do you measure that?
A: Very simple, you get to measure what are you and where are you trying go and are you making progress. I wrestled with this years ago when I was NSA ....
Q: You don't want quotas, though?
A: Quotas are forbidden so we set goals. My way of thinking about it is what is your end state? Now some would say that federal governments should look like America, whatever that is. OK, that sounded like a reasonable metric, so I said, 'Alright, what does America look like?' So I got a bunch of numbers. I said, 'Alright, what do we look like?' and it didn't match, and as I just told you, the one place where there's the greatest mismatch is Hispanic. It's much closer, as matter of fact, people would be surprised how close it is across, at least my community among the other minorities. Now, that said, numbers don't necessarily equal positioning in the organization. So that's another feature we have to work on, is placement of women and minorities in leadership positions.
Q: So, you're quantifying that as well?
A: Yes.
TERRORIST ACTIVITY ON THE NATION'S SOUTHWEST BORDER
Q: There seems to be very little terrorist-related activity on the Southwest border, which is watched very closely because of the illegal immigration issue. Can you talk about why it's important to be alert here?
A: Let me go back to my NIE, those are unclassified key judgements, pull them down and look at them. You've got committed leadership. You've got a place to train. They've got trainers and they've got recruits. The key now is getting recruits in. So if the key is getting recruits in. So, if you're key is getting recruits in, how would you do that? And so, how would you do that?
Q: I'd go to the northern border where there's nobody watching.
A: And that's a path. Flying in is a path. Taking a ship in is a path. Coming up through the Mexican border is a path. Now are they doing it in great numbers, no. Because we're finding them and we're identifying them and we've got watch lists and we're keeping them at bay. There are numerous situations where people are alive today because we caught them (terrorists). And my point earlier, we catch them or we prevent them because we've got the sources and methods that lets us identify them and do something about it. And you know the more sources and methods are compromised, we have that problem.
Q: And in many cases we don't hear about them?
A: The vast majority you don't hear about. Remember, let me give you a way to think about this. If you've got an issue, you have three potential outcomes, only three. A diplomatic success, an operational success or an intelligence failure. Because all those diplomatic successes and operations successes where there's intelligence contribution, it's not an intelligence success. It's just part of the process. But if there's an intelligence failure ...
Q: Then you hear about it.
A: So, are terrorists coming across the Southwest border? Not in great numbers.
Q: There are some cases?
A: There are some. And would they use it as a path, given it was available to them? In time they will.
Q: If they're successful at it, then they'll probably repeat it.
A: Sure. There were a significant number of Iraqis who came across last year. Smuggled across illegally.
Q: Where was that?
A: Across the Southwest border.
Q: Can you give me anymore detail?
A: I probably could if I had my notebook. It's significant numbers. I'll have somebody get it for you. I don't remember what it is.
Q: The point is it went from a number to (triple) in a single year, because they figured it out. Now some we caught, some we didn't. The ones that get in, what are they going to do? They're going to write home. So, it's not rocket science, word will move around. There's a program now in South America, where you can, once you're in South American countries, you can move around in South America and Central America without a visa. So you get a forged passport in Lebanon or where ever that gets you to South America. Now, no visa, you can move around, and with you're forged passport, as a citizen of whatever, you could come across that border. So, what I'm highlighting is that something ...
Q: Is this how it happened, the cases you're talking about?
A: Yes.
By Chris Roberts | El Paso Times | August 22, 2007
The following is the transcript of a question and answer session with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.
Question: How much has President Bush or members of his administration formed your response to the FISA debate?
Answer: Not at all. When I came back in, remember my previous assignment was director of the NSA, so this was an area I have known a little bit about. So I came back in. I was nominated the first week of January. The administration had made a decision to put the terrorist surveillance program into the FISA court. I think that happened the 7th of Jan. So as I come in the door and I'm prepping for the hearings, this sort of all happened. So the first thing I want to know is what's this program and what's the background and I was pretty surprised at what I learned. First off, the issue was the technology had changed and we had worked ourselves into a position that we were focusing on foreign terrorist communications, and this was a terrorist foreigner in a foreign country. The issue was international communications are on a wire so all of a sudden we were in a position because of the wording in the law that we had to have a warrant to do that. So the most important thing to capture is that it's a foreigner in a foreign country, required to get a warrant. Now if it were wireless, we would not be required to get a warrant. Plus we were limited in what we were doing to terrorism only and the last time I checked we had a mission called foreign intelligence, which should be construed to mean anything of a foreign intelligence interest, North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, military development and it goes on and on and on. So when I engaged with the administration, I said we've gotten ourselves into a position here where we need to clarify, so the FISA issue had been debated and legislation had been passed in the house in 2006, did not pass the Senate. Two bills were introduced in the Senate, I don't know if it was co-sponsorship or two different bills, but Sen. (Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) had a bill and Sen. Specter had a bill and it may have been the same bill, I don't know, but the point is a lot of debate, a lot of dialogue. So, it was submitted to the FISA court and the first ruling in the FISA court was what we needed to do we could do with an approval process that was at a summary level and that was OK, we stayed in business and we're doing our mission. Well in the FISA process, you may or may not be aware ...
Q: When you say summary level, do you mean the FISA court?
A: The FISA court. The FISA court ruled presented the program to them and they said the program is what you say it is and it's appropriate and it's legitimate, it's not an issue and was had approval. But the FISA process has a renewal. It comes up every so many days and there are 11 FISA judges. So the second judge looked at the same data and said well wait a minute I interpret the law, which is the FISA law, differently. And it came down to, if it's on a wire and it's foreign in a foreign country, you have to have a warrant and so we found ourselves in a position of actually losing ground because it was the first review was less capability, we got a stay and that took us to the 31st of May. After the 31st of May we were in extremis because now we have significantly less capability. And meantime, the community, before I came back, had been working on a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist threat to the homeland. And the key elements of the terrorist threat to the homeland, there were four key elements, a resilient determined adversary with senior leadership willing to die for the cause, requiring a place to train and develop, think of it as safe haven, they had discovered that in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now the Pakistani government is pushing and pressing and attempting to do something about it, but by and large they have areas of safe haven. So leadership that can adapt, safe haven, intermediate leadership, these are think of them as trainers, facilitators, operational control guys. And the fourth part is recruits. They have them, they've taken them. This area is referred to as the FATA, federally administered tribal areas, they have the recruits and now the objective is to get them into the United States for mass casualties to conduct terrorist operations to achieve mass casualties. All of those four parts have been carried out except the fourth. They have em, but they haven't been successful. One of the major tools for us to keep them out is the FISA program, a significant tool and we're going the wrong direction. So, for me it was extremis to start talking not only to the administration, but to members of the hill. So from June until the bill was passed, I think I talked to probably 260 members, senators and congressmen. We submitted the bill in April, had an open hearing 1 May, we had a closed hearing in May, I don't remember the exact date. Chairman (U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas) had two hearings and I had a chance to brief the judiciary committee in the house, the intelligence committee in the house and I just mentioned the Senate, did not brief the full judiciary committee in the Senate, but I did meet with Sen. (Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.) and Sen. (Arlen Specter, R-Pa.), and I did have an opportunity on the Senate side, they have a tradition there of every quarter they invite the director of national intelligence in to talk to them update them on topics of interest. And that happened in (June 27). Well what they wanted to hear about was Iraq and Afghanistan and for whatever reason, I'm giving them my review and they ask questions in the order in which they arrive in the room. The second question was on FISA, so it gave me an opportunity to, here I am worrying about this problem and I have 41 senators and I said several things. The current threat is increasing, I'm worried about it. Our capability is decreasing and let me explain the problem.
Q: Can't you get the warrant after the fact?
A: The issue is volume and time. Think about foreign intelligence. What it presented me with an opportunity is to make the case for something current, but what I was really also trying to put a strong emphasis on is the need to do foreign intelligence in any context. My argument was that the intelligence community should not be restricted when we are conducting foreign surveillance against a foreigner in a foreign country, just by dint of the fact that it happened to touch a wire. We haven't done that in wireless for years.
Q: So you end up with people tied up doing paperwork?
A: It takes about 200 man hours to do one telephone number. Think about it from the judges standpoint. Well, is this foreign intelligence? Well how do you know it's foreign intelligence? Well what does Abdul calling Mohammed mean, and how do I interpret that? So, it's a very complex process, so now, I've got people speaking Urdu and Farsi and, you know, whatever, Arabic, pull them off the line have them go through this process to justify what it is they know and why and so on. And now you've got to write it all up and it goes through the signature process, take it through (the Justice Department), and take it down to the FISA court. So all that process is about 200 man hours for one number. We're going backwards, we couldn't keep up. So the issue was ...
Q: How many calls? Thousands?
A: Don't want to go there. Just think, lots. Too many. Now the second part of the issue was under the president's program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us. Because if you're going to get access you've got to have a partner and they were being sued. Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies. So my position was we have to provide liability protection to these private sector entities. So that was part of the request. So we went through that and we argued it. Some wanted to limit us to terrorism. My argument was, wait a minute, why would I want to limit it to terrorism. It may be that terrorists are achieving weapons of mass destruction, the only way I would know that is if I'm doing foreign intelligence by who might be providing a weapon of mass destruction.
Q: And this is still all foreign to foreign communication?
A: All foreign to foreign. So, in the final analysis, I was after three points, no warrant for a foreigner overseas, a foreign intelligence target located overseas, liability protection for the private sector and the third point was we must be required to have a warrant for surveillance against a U.S. person. And when I say U.S. person I want to make sure you capture what that means. That does not mean citizen. That means a foreigner, who is here, we still have to have a warrant because he's here. My view is that that's the right check and balances and it's the right protection for the country and lets us still do our mission for protection of the country. And we're trying to fend off foreign threats.
Q: So are you satisfied with it the way it is now?
A: I am. The issue that we did not address, which has to be addressed is the liability protection for the private sector now is proscriptive, meaning going forward. We've got a retroactive problem. When I went through and briefed the various senators and congressmen, the issue was alright, look, we don't want to work that right now, it's too hard because we want to find out about some issues of the past. So what I recommended to the administration is, 'Let's take that off the table for now and take it up when Congress reconvenes in September.'
Q: With an eye toward the six-month review?
A: No, the retroactive liability protection has got to be addressed.
Q: And that's not in the current law?
A: It is not. Now people have said that I negotiated in bad faith, or I did not keep my word or whatever...
Q: That you had an agenda that you weren't honest about.
A: I'll give you the facts from my point of view. When I checked on board I had my discussion with the president. I'm an apolitical figure. I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat. I have voted for both. My job is as a professional to try to do this job the best way I can in terms of, from the intelligence community, protect the nation. So I made my argument that we should have the ability to do surveillance the same way we've done it for the past 50 years and not be inhibited when it's a foreigner in a foreign country. The president's guidance to me early in the process, was, 'You've got the experience. I trust your judgement. You make the right call. There's no pressure from anybody here to tell you how to do it. He did that early. He revisited with me in June. He did it again in July and he said it publicly on Friday before the bill was passed. We were at the FBI, it's an annual thing, we go to the FBI and do a homeland security kind of update. So he came out at noon and said, 'I'm requesting that Congress pass this bill. It's essential. Do it before you go on recess. I'm depending on Mike McConnell's recommendations. And that was the total sum and substance of the guidance and the involvement from the White House with regard to how I should make the call. Now, as we negotiated, we started with 66 pages, were trying to get everything cleaned up at once. When I reduced it to my three points, we went from 66 pages to 11. Now, this is a very, very complex bill. I had a team of 20 lawyers working. You can change a word in a paragraph and end up with some major catastrophe down in paragraph 27, subsection 2c, to shut yourself down, you'll be out of business. So when we send up our 11 pages, we had a lot of help in making sure we got it just right so it would come back and we'd say wait a minute we can't live with this or one of the lawyers would say, 'Wait we tried that, it won't work, here's the problem.' So we kept going back and forth, so we sent up a version like Monday, we sent up a version on Wednesday, we sent up a version on Thursday. The House leadership, or the Democratic leadership on Thursday took that bill and we talked about it. And my response was there are some things I can't live with in this bill and they said alright we're going to fix them. Now, here's the issue. I never then had a chance to read it for the fix because, again, it's so complex, if you change a word or phrase, or even a paragraph reference, you can cause unintended ...
Q: You have to make sure it's all consistent?
A: Right. So I can't agree to it until it's in writing and my 20 lawyers, who have been doing this for two years, can work through it. So in the final analysis, I was put in the position of making a call on something I hadn't read. So when it came down to crunch time, we got a copy and it had some of the offending language back in it. So I said, 'I can't support it.' And it played out in the House the way it played out in the House. Meantime on the Senate side, there were two versions being looked at. The Wednesday version and the Thursday version. And one side took one version and the other side took the other version. The Thursday version, we had some help, and I didn't get a chance to review it. So now, it's Friday night, the Senate's voting. They were having their debate and I still had not had a chance to review it. So, I walked over, I was up visiting some senators trying to explain some of the background. So I walked over to the chamber and as I walked into the office just off the chamber, it's the vice president's office, somebody gave me a copy. So I looked at the version and said, 'Can't do it. The same language was back in there.'
Q: What was it?
A: Just let me leave it, not too much detail, there were things with regard to our authorities some language around minimization. So it put us in an untenable position. So then I had another version to take a look at, which was our Wednesday version, which basically was unchanged. So I said, well certainly, I'm going to support that Wednesday version. So that's what I said and the vote happened in the Senate and that was on Friday. So now it rolled to the House on Saturday. They took up the bill, they had a spirited debate, my name was invoked several times, not in a favorable light in some cases. (laughs) And they took a vote and it passed 226 to 182, I think. So it's law. The president signed it on Sunday and here we are.
Q: That's far from unanimous. There's obviously going to be more debate on this.
A: There are a couple of issues to just be sensitive to. There's a claim of reverse targeting. Now what that means is we would target somebody in a foreign country who is calling into the United States and our intent is to not go after the bad guy, but to listen to somebody in the United States. That's not legal, it's, it would be a breach of the Fourth Amendment. You can go to jail for that sort of thing. And If a foreign bad guy is calling into the United States, if there's a need to have a warrant, for the person in the United States, you just get a warrant. And so if a terrorist calls in and it's another terrorist, I think the American public would want us to do surveillance of that U.S. person in this case. So we would just get a warrant and do that. It's a manageable thing. On the U.S. persons side it's 100 or less. And then the foreign side, it's in the thousands. Now there's a sense that we're doing massive data mining. In fact, what we're doing is surgical. A telephone number is surgical. So, if you know what number, you can select it out. So that's, we've got a lot of territory to make up with people believing that we're doing things we're not doing.
Q: Even if it's perception, how do you deal with that? You have to do public relations, I assume.
A: Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. And you give them the facts the best you can. Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they're using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Q. So you're saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?
A. That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it's a democratic process and sunshine's a good thing. We need to have the debate. The reason that the FISA law was passed in 1978 was an arrangement was worked out between the Congress and the administration, we did not want to allow this community to conduct surveillance, electronic surveillance, of Americans for foreign intelligence unless you had a warrant, so that was required. So there was no warrant required for a foreign target in a foreign land. And so we are trying to get back to what was the intention of '78. Now because of the claim, counterclaim, mistrust, suspicion, the only way you could make any progress was to have this debate in an open way.
Q. So you don't think there was an alternative way to do this?
A. There may have been an alternative way, but we are where are ...
Q. A better way, I should say.
A. All of my briefs initially were very classified. But it became apparent that we were not going to be able to carry the day if we don't talk to more people.
Q. Some might say that's the price you pay for living in a free society. Do you think that this is necessary that these Americans die?
A. We could have gotten there a different way. We conducted intelligence since World War II and we've maintained a sensitivity as far as sources and methods. It's basically a sources and methods argument. If you don't protect sources and methods then those you target will choose alternative means, different paths. As it is today al-Qaida in Iraq is targeting Americans, specifically the coalition. There are activities supported by other nations to import electronic, or explosively formed projectiles, to do these roadside attacks and what we know about that is often out of very sensitive sources and methods. So the more public it is, then they take it away from us. So that's the tradeoff.
DIVERSITY IN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
Q: I wanted to ask you about the diversity question. This has major ramifications here, we have this center of excellence program that's recruiting high school kids, many of whom wouldn't qualify if first generation American citizens weren't allowed.
A: So you agree with me?
Q: It does sound like something that would benefit this area that would also allow you to get people from here who are bicultural and have an openness to seeing things ...
A: You're talking about Hispanics?
Q: Yes.
A: Hispanics are probably the most under-represented group if you think of America, what the ethic makeup of America, Hispanics are the most under-represented group in my community. Now, that said, and should increase that Hispanic population and programs like this will do that. That's why the outreach. But also we need, particularly with the current problem of terrorism, we need to have speakers of Urdu and Farsi and Arabic and people from those cultures that understand the issues of tribes and clans and all the things that go with understanding that part of the world. Varying religions and so on. Because it is, it's almost impossible, I've had the chance to live in the Middle East for years, I've studied it for years, it's impossible to understand it without having some feel for the culture and so on. So while I'm all for increasing the diversity along the lines we talked about, I'm also very much in favor of first generation Americans from the countries that are causing issues and problems.
Q: What is the status of that program.
A: It is not in statue. It is not in policy. It has been habit. So we've stated, as a matter of policy, that we're not going to abide by those habits.
Q: And that's already the case?
A: Yes, and are we making progress? Not fast enough, but we will make progress over time.
Q: How do you measure that?
A: Very simple, you get to measure what are you and where are you trying go and are you making progress. I wrestled with this years ago when I was NSA ....
Q: You don't want quotas, though?
A: Quotas are forbidden so we set goals. My way of thinking about it is what is your end state? Now some would say that federal governments should look like America, whatever that is. OK, that sounded like a reasonable metric, so I said, 'Alright, what does America look like?' So I got a bunch of numbers. I said, 'Alright, what do we look like?' and it didn't match, and as I just told you, the one place where there's the greatest mismatch is Hispanic. It's much closer, as matter of fact, people would be surprised how close it is across, at least my community among the other minorities. Now, that said, numbers don't necessarily equal positioning in the organization. So that's another feature we have to work on, is placement of women and minorities in leadership positions.
Q: So, you're quantifying that as well?
A: Yes.
TERRORIST ACTIVITY ON THE NATION'S SOUTHWEST BORDER
Q: There seems to be very little terrorist-related activity on the Southwest border, which is watched very closely because of the illegal immigration issue. Can you talk about why it's important to be alert here?
A: Let me go back to my NIE, those are unclassified key judgements, pull them down and look at them. You've got committed leadership. You've got a place to train. They've got trainers and they've got recruits. The key now is getting recruits in. So if the key is getting recruits in. So, if you're key is getting recruits in, how would you do that? And so, how would you do that?
Q: I'd go to the northern border where there's nobody watching.
A: And that's a path. Flying in is a path. Taking a ship in is a path. Coming up through the Mexican border is a path. Now are they doing it in great numbers, no. Because we're finding them and we're identifying them and we've got watch lists and we're keeping them at bay. There are numerous situations where people are alive today because we caught them (terrorists). And my point earlier, we catch them or we prevent them because we've got the sources and methods that lets us identify them and do something about it. And you know the more sources and methods are compromised, we have that problem.
Q: And in many cases we don't hear about them?
A: The vast majority you don't hear about. Remember, let me give you a way to think about this. If you've got an issue, you have three potential outcomes, only three. A diplomatic success, an operational success or an intelligence failure. Because all those diplomatic successes and operations successes where there's intelligence contribution, it's not an intelligence success. It's just part of the process. But if there's an intelligence failure ...
Q: Then you hear about it.
A: So, are terrorists coming across the Southwest border? Not in great numbers.
Q: There are some cases?
A: There are some. And would they use it as a path, given it was available to them? In time they will.
Q: If they're successful at it, then they'll probably repeat it.
A: Sure. There were a significant number of Iraqis who came across last year. Smuggled across illegally.
Q: Where was that?
A: Across the Southwest border.
Q: Can you give me anymore detail?
A: I probably could if I had my notebook. It's significant numbers. I'll have somebody get it for you. I don't remember what it is.
Q: The point is it went from a number to (triple) in a single year, because they figured it out. Now some we caught, some we didn't. The ones that get in, what are they going to do? They're going to write home. So, it's not rocket science, word will move around. There's a program now in South America, where you can, once you're in South American countries, you can move around in South America and Central America without a visa. So you get a forged passport in Lebanon or where ever that gets you to South America. Now, no visa, you can move around, and with you're forged passport, as a citizen of whatever, you could come across that border. So, what I'm highlighting is that something ...
Q: Is this how it happened, the cases you're talking about?
A: Yes.
Filed under
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by Winter Patriot
on Thursday, August 23, 2007
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NYT : Intelligence Chief Reveals Details on Surveillance
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Intelligence Chief Reveals Details on Surveillance
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | August 22, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) -- National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell pulled the curtain back on previously classified details of government surveillance and of a secretive court whose recent rulings created new hurdles for the Bush administration as it tries to prevent terrorism.
McConnell's comments -- made in an interview with the El Paso (Texas) Times last week and posted as a transcript on the newspaper's Web site Wednesday -- raised eyebrows for their frank discussion of previously classified eavesdropping work conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. Among the disclosures:
-- McConnell confirmed for the first time that the private sector assisted with President Bush's warrantless surveillance program. AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications companies are being sued for their cooperation. ''Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies,'' McConnell said, arguing that they deserve immunity for their help.
-- He provided new details on court rulings handed down by the 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves classified eavesdropping operations and whose proceedings are almost always entirely secret. McConnell said a ruling that went into effect May 31 required the government to get court warrants to monitor communications between two foreigners if the conversation travels on a wire in the U.S. network. Millions of calls each day do, because of the robust nature of the U.S. systems.
-- McConnell said it takes 200 hours to assemble a FISA warrant on a single telephone number. ''We're going backwards,'' he said. ''We couldn't keep up.''
-- Offering never-disclosed figures, McConnell also revealed that fewer than 100 people inside the United States are monitored under FISA warrants. However, he said, thousands of people overseas are monitored.
McConnell's comments were a dramatic departure from the government's normally tight-lipped approach to disclosing any information about how it spies on electronic communications -- some of its most sensitive and costly work. The FISA court's activities are particularly protected.
Even as he shed new light on the classified operations, McConnell asserted that the current debate in Congress about whether to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will cost American lives because of all the information it revealed to terrorists.
''Part of this is a classified world. The fact that we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die,'' he said.
McConnell was in El Paso last week for a conference on border security hosted by House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas. The spy chief joined Reyes for an interview with his local paper.
At the end of the interview, McConnell cautioned reporter Chris Roberts that he should consider whether enemies of the U.S. could gain from the information he just shared in the interview, Roberts said. McConnell left it to the paper to decide what to publish.
''I don't believe it damaged national security or endangered any of our people,'' said El Paso Times Executive Editor Dionicio Flores.
McConnell appeared days after Congress passed a temporary law to expand the government's ability to monitor suspects in national security investigations -- terrorists, spies and others -- without first seeking court approval in certain cases. The highly contentious measure expires in six months.
After Sept. 11, Bush authorized the terrorist surveillance program to monitor conversations between people in the United States and others overseas when terrorism is suspected. Until January, no warrants were required. But as the Democratic Congress took over, the Bush administration decided to bring the program under the oversight of the FISA court.
McConnell said the court initially ruled that the program was appropriate and legitimate. But when the ruling had to be renewed in the spring, another judge saw the operations differently. This judge, who McConnell did not identify, decided that the government needed a warrant to monitor a conversation between foreigners when the signal traveled on a wire in the U.S. communications network.
McConnell said the government got a temporary stay on the ruling, but it expired at the end of May. ''After the 31st of May, we were in extremis because now we have significantly less capability,'' he said.
At the same time, the intelligence community was wrapping up years of work on a National Intelligence Estimate on threats to the homeland -- an analysis that is considered its most comprehensive judgment. It found the threat was increasing, McConnell noted.
Because he sees FISA as a major tool to keep terrorists out of the country, McConnell said he pressed Congress to change the law.
McConnell's interview raised concerns at the Justice Department, where senior officials questioned whether the intelligence chief had overstepped in discussing the secret FISA court.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse referred questions to McConnell's office, where his spokesman Ross Feinstein declined to comment.
In a phone interview, Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra said he never felt at liberty to discuss some of the information that McConnell did, including the FISA court rulings, but the executive branch gets to decide what is classified. ''What I think it tells you is how important they believe it is to get this FISA thing done right,'' said Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
He said McConnell is hurt by the personal attacks on him during the FISA recent debate. Among them, Democrats have alleged that he negotiated in bad faith and was too beholden to the White House.
In addition, Hoekstra said he thinks McConnell wanted to push back on accusations that the legislation gave the attorney general unprecedented new powers. ''I think they felt they had to become more public,'' he said.
------
Associated Press writers Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington and Alicia A. Caldwell in El Paso contributed to this report.
------
On the Net:
A transcript of the El Paso Times interview: http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci--6685679
Office of the Director of National Intelligence: http://www.odni.gov/
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | August 22, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) -- National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell pulled the curtain back on previously classified details of government surveillance and of a secretive court whose recent rulings created new hurdles for the Bush administration as it tries to prevent terrorism.
McConnell's comments -- made in an interview with the El Paso (Texas) Times last week and posted as a transcript on the newspaper's Web site Wednesday -- raised eyebrows for their frank discussion of previously classified eavesdropping work conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. Among the disclosures:
-- McConnell confirmed for the first time that the private sector assisted with President Bush's warrantless surveillance program. AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications companies are being sued for their cooperation. ''Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies,'' McConnell said, arguing that they deserve immunity for their help.
-- He provided new details on court rulings handed down by the 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves classified eavesdropping operations and whose proceedings are almost always entirely secret. McConnell said a ruling that went into effect May 31 required the government to get court warrants to monitor communications between two foreigners if the conversation travels on a wire in the U.S. network. Millions of calls each day do, because of the robust nature of the U.S. systems.
-- McConnell said it takes 200 hours to assemble a FISA warrant on a single telephone number. ''We're going backwards,'' he said. ''We couldn't keep up.''
-- Offering never-disclosed figures, McConnell also revealed that fewer than 100 people inside the United States are monitored under FISA warrants. However, he said, thousands of people overseas are monitored.
McConnell's comments were a dramatic departure from the government's normally tight-lipped approach to disclosing any information about how it spies on electronic communications -- some of its most sensitive and costly work. The FISA court's activities are particularly protected.
Even as he shed new light on the classified operations, McConnell asserted that the current debate in Congress about whether to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will cost American lives because of all the information it revealed to terrorists.
''Part of this is a classified world. The fact that we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die,'' he said.
McConnell was in El Paso last week for a conference on border security hosted by House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas. The spy chief joined Reyes for an interview with his local paper.
At the end of the interview, McConnell cautioned reporter Chris Roberts that he should consider whether enemies of the U.S. could gain from the information he just shared in the interview, Roberts said. McConnell left it to the paper to decide what to publish.
''I don't believe it damaged national security or endangered any of our people,'' said El Paso Times Executive Editor Dionicio Flores.
McConnell appeared days after Congress passed a temporary law to expand the government's ability to monitor suspects in national security investigations -- terrorists, spies and others -- without first seeking court approval in certain cases. The highly contentious measure expires in six months.
After Sept. 11, Bush authorized the terrorist surveillance program to monitor conversations between people in the United States and others overseas when terrorism is suspected. Until January, no warrants were required. But as the Democratic Congress took over, the Bush administration decided to bring the program under the oversight of the FISA court.
McConnell said the court initially ruled that the program was appropriate and legitimate. But when the ruling had to be renewed in the spring, another judge saw the operations differently. This judge, who McConnell did not identify, decided that the government needed a warrant to monitor a conversation between foreigners when the signal traveled on a wire in the U.S. communications network.
McConnell said the government got a temporary stay on the ruling, but it expired at the end of May. ''After the 31st of May, we were in extremis because now we have significantly less capability,'' he said.
At the same time, the intelligence community was wrapping up years of work on a National Intelligence Estimate on threats to the homeland -- an analysis that is considered its most comprehensive judgment. It found the threat was increasing, McConnell noted.
Because he sees FISA as a major tool to keep terrorists out of the country, McConnell said he pressed Congress to change the law.
McConnell's interview raised concerns at the Justice Department, where senior officials questioned whether the intelligence chief had overstepped in discussing the secret FISA court.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse referred questions to McConnell's office, where his spokesman Ross Feinstein declined to comment.
In a phone interview, Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra said he never felt at liberty to discuss some of the information that McConnell did, including the FISA court rulings, but the executive branch gets to decide what is classified. ''What I think it tells you is how important they believe it is to get this FISA thing done right,'' said Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
He said McConnell is hurt by the personal attacks on him during the FISA recent debate. Among them, Democrats have alleged that he negotiated in bad faith and was too beholden to the White House.
In addition, Hoekstra said he thinks McConnell wanted to push back on accusations that the legislation gave the attorney general unprecedented new powers. ''I think they felt they had to become more public,'' he said.
------
Associated Press writers Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington and Alicia A. Caldwell in El Paso contributed to this report.
------
On the Net:
A transcript of the El Paso Times interview: http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci--6685679
Office of the Director of National Intelligence: http://www.odni.gov/
Filed under
Mike McConnell,
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by Winter Patriot
on Thursday, August 23, 2007
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TIME : Officials Admit Having Wiretap Papers
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Officials Admit Having Wiretap Papers
AP | August 21, 2007
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Dick Cheney's office acknowledged it has documents that "may be responsive" to an investigation into a secret eavesdropping program, although it indicated it would not turn over the papers without a fight.
Lawyers speaking on behalf of both President Bush and Cheney asked the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday for more time to respond to subpoenas involving a wiretapping program that Democrats in Congress have harshly questioned.
In a letter to committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, Cheney's counsel Shannen W. Coffin, reported that the vice president's office had identified more than 40 "Top Secret/Codeword Presidential Authorizations" and memoranda from the Justice Department that may respond to the subpoena.
The documents listed in the letter are dated from Oct. 4, 2001 — about a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks — and December 2006. "We continue our efforts to identify further documents that may be responsive to the subpoena and renew the request made in our letter of Aug. 10, 2007 for an extension of time," Coffin wrote.
Cheney's counsel, however, did not indicate whether the vice president's office was willing to hand the documents without a struggle. The letter did indicate that Cheney would follow the lead of the president if Bush decided to assert executive privilege in refusing to turn over documents.
Leahy was not happy with the administration's response, threatening to hold key officials in contempt for not producing subpoenaed information about the legal justification for the eavesdropping program. "When the Senate comes back in the session, I'll bring it up before the committee," the Vermont Democrat said. "I prefer cooperation to contempt. Right now, there's no question that they are in contempt of the valid order of the Congress."
Leahy's committee on June 27 subpoenaed the Justice Department, National Security Council and the offices of the president and vice president for documents relating to the National Security Agency's legal justification for the wiretapping program.
White House lawyer Fred Fielding, in a separate letter to Leahy, said the administration needed more time. "A core set of highly sensitive national security and related documents we have so far identified are potentially subject to claims of executive privilege and that a more complete collection and review of all materials responsive to the subpoenas will require additional time," Fielding said.
Congress, before it left for its August recess, approved an update to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allowing the government to eavesdrop on terror suspects overseas without first getting a court warrant.
The overhaul was the result of a recent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling that banned eavesdropping on foreigners when their messages were routed though communications carriers based in the United States.
The provisions expire after six months, but the White House wants them made permanent. "For Congress to legislate effectively in this area, it has to have full information about the executive branch's interpretations of FISA," Leahy said. "We cannot, and certainly, we should not legislate in the dark, where the administration hides behind a fictitious veil of secrecy."
AP | August 21, 2007
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Dick Cheney's office acknowledged it has documents that "may be responsive" to an investigation into a secret eavesdropping program, although it indicated it would not turn over the papers without a fight.
Lawyers speaking on behalf of both President Bush and Cheney asked the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday for more time to respond to subpoenas involving a wiretapping program that Democrats in Congress have harshly questioned.
In a letter to committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, Cheney's counsel Shannen W. Coffin, reported that the vice president's office had identified more than 40 "Top Secret/Codeword Presidential Authorizations" and memoranda from the Justice Department that may respond to the subpoena.
The documents listed in the letter are dated from Oct. 4, 2001 — about a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks — and December 2006. "We continue our efforts to identify further documents that may be responsive to the subpoena and renew the request made in our letter of Aug. 10, 2007 for an extension of time," Coffin wrote.
Cheney's counsel, however, did not indicate whether the vice president's office was willing to hand the documents without a struggle. The letter did indicate that Cheney would follow the lead of the president if Bush decided to assert executive privilege in refusing to turn over documents.
Leahy was not happy with the administration's response, threatening to hold key officials in contempt for not producing subpoenaed information about the legal justification for the eavesdropping program. "When the Senate comes back in the session, I'll bring it up before the committee," the Vermont Democrat said. "I prefer cooperation to contempt. Right now, there's no question that they are in contempt of the valid order of the Congress."
Leahy's committee on June 27 subpoenaed the Justice Department, National Security Council and the offices of the president and vice president for documents relating to the National Security Agency's legal justification for the wiretapping program.
White House lawyer Fred Fielding, in a separate letter to Leahy, said the administration needed more time. "A core set of highly sensitive national security and related documents we have so far identified are potentially subject to claims of executive privilege and that a more complete collection and review of all materials responsive to the subpoenas will require additional time," Fielding said.
Congress, before it left for its August recess, approved an update to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allowing the government to eavesdrop on terror suspects overseas without first getting a court warrant.
The overhaul was the result of a recent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling that banned eavesdropping on foreigners when their messages were routed though communications carriers based in the United States.
The provisions expire after six months, but the White House wants them made permanent. "For Congress to legislate effectively in this area, it has to have full information about the executive branch's interpretations of FISA," Leahy said. "We cannot, and certainly, we should not legislate in the dark, where the administration hides behind a fictitious veil of secrecy."
Filed under
Dick Cheney,
Patrick Leahy,
wiretapping
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, August 21, 2007
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NYT : Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI | August 11, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — At a closed-door briefing in mid-July, senior intelligence officials startled lawmakers with some troubling news. American eavesdroppers were collecting just 25 percent of the foreign-based communications they had been receiving a few months earlier.
Congress needed to act quickly, intelligence officials said, to repair a dangerous situation.
Some lawmakers were alarmed. Others, jaded by past intelligence warnings, were skeptical.
The report helped set off a furious legislative rush last week that, improbably, broadened the administration’s authority to wiretap terrorism suspects without court oversight.
It was a surprising victory for the politically weakened White House on an issue that had plodded along in Congress for months without a clear sign of urgency or resolution. A flurry of talk in the last three weeks on intelligence gaps, heightened concern over terrorist attacks, burdensome court rulings and Congress’s recess helped turn the debate from a slow boil to a fever pitch.
For months, Democrats had refused to give the administration new wiretapping powers until the White House agreed to turn over documents about the National Security Agency program to eavesdrop on some Americans’ international communications without warrants.
The White House refused to back down, even after Congressional subpoenas were issued. The administration ultimately attracted the support it needed to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from moderate Democrats who felt pressed to act before the recess.
For the White House and its Republican allies, the decision by the Democratic-controlled Congress to act quickly was critical to safeguarding the country this summer as intelligence officials spoke of increasing “chatter” among Qaeda suspects.
To many Democrats who opposed the action, it was a reflection of fear mongering by the White House, and political capitulation by some fellow Democrats.
“There was an intentional manipulation of the facts to get this legislation through,” said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the plan.
The White House, Mr. Feingold said Friday in an interview, “has identified the one major remaining weakness in the Democratic Party, and that’s its unwillingness to stand up to the administration when it’s making a power grab regarding terrorism and national security.”
“They have figured out that all they have to do is start talking about an imminent terrorist threat, back it up against a Congressional recess, and they know the Democrats will cave,” he added.
Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, said the White House “very skillfully played the fear card.”
“With the chatter up in August,” Ms. Harman said, “the issue of FISA reform got traction. Then they ran out the clock.”
A White House official said the push was driven by genuine concerns by Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, for the government’s ability to conduct terrorist surveillance.
“There was no real argument on the need for a fix” between Democrats and Republicans, the White House official said. “He’s a straight shooter.”
The prelude to approval of the plan occurred in January, when the administration agreed to put the wiretapping program under the oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The court is charged with guarding against governmental spying abuses. Officials say one judge issued a ruling in January that allowed the administration to continue the program under the court’s supervision.
A ruling a month or two later — the judge who made it and its exact timing are not clear — restricted the government’s ability to intercept foreign-to-foreign communications passing through telecommunication “switches” on American soil.
The security agency was newly required to seek warrants to monitor at least some of those phone calls and e-mail messages. As a result, the ability to intercept foreign-based communications “kept getting ratcheted down,” said a senior intelligence official who insisted on anonymity because the account involved classified material. “ We were to a point where we were not effectively operating.”
Mr. McConnell, lead negotiator for the administration in lobbying for the bill, said in an interview that the court’s restrictions had made his job much more difficult.
“It was crazy, because I’m sitting here signing out warrants on known Al Qaeda operatives that are killing Americans, doing foreign communications,” he said. “And the only reason I’m signing that warrant is because it touches the U.S. communications infrastructure. That’s what we fixed.”
In April, Mr. McConnell began talking with lawmakers in classified meetings about that “intelligence gap” and alluded to it publicly, too. At the time, the administration proposed sweeping measures to “modernize” the foreign surveillance law, a much broader proposal in some respects than what Congress approved.
The proposal was considered dead on arrival by some Democrats, who argued that the administration was overreaching and asking Congress to legislate blindly without access to documents on the legal history and operations of the program.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’ political problems, including questions about truthfulness in testimony on the eavesdropping, helped stall any action, in part because the administration wanted him to have oversight of the broadened wiretapping authorities.
When the administration proposed its revisions in April, “everyone kind of laughed at us,” said a Justice Department official who insisted on anonymity. “We got bludgeoned. People just said: ‘Are you kidding? We’re not even going to consider it.’ ”
The administration’s classified briefings on the “intelligence gap” grew more urgent. In May, members of the Intelligence Committees began hearing about specific cases in which eavesdroppers could not intercept certain communications, said Representative Heather A. Wilson, Republican of New Mexico.
By June and early July, Ms. Wilson said Friday in an interview, the scope of what intelligence officials were missing had grown “frighteningly large.”
“I begged my colleagues to act,” she said. “They did nothing for six weeks. They weren’t going to act unless they were forced to. So we started raising the pressure.”
Some Democrats reacted skeptically to the closed-door briefings by Mr. McConnell and other intelligence officials. Intelligence Committee members acknowledged that they learned in May that the secret court ruling had caused some problems, but it was not until last month that the administration reported the gaps.
“They changed that story,” a Democratic Congressional aide said, amid talk about a backlog in warrant applications.
By mid-July, Mr. McConnell’s briefings, coupled with the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, set the tone for a series of talks between the White House and Mr. McConnell’s office and Democratic Congressional leaders.
After learning of the intelligence problems, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, contacted the White House to discuss repairing them. On July 12, the White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, discussed the problem with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, a senior White House official said.
At first, some Democratic leaders favored amending the surveillance law in September. Mr. McConnell pressed for an immediate repair.
Two weeks later, the administration lowered its sights, slimming its original 66-page proposal to 11 pages and eliminating some of the controversial plans like broad immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that aided eavesdropping.
Congressional Democrats effectively agreed to try to forge a narrow bill to address the foreign problem that Mr. McConnell identified. But they were at odds over a critical detail, the court oversight.
Democratic leaders did not demand that the security agency seek individual court warrants for eavesdropping. But they did want the court to review and approve the agency procedures soon after surveillance began.
The administration, however, wanted the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to approve the surveillance, with the court weighing in just to certify that no abuses occurred, and only long after the surveillance had been conducted.
The talks intensified in the days before the recess last weekend, highlighted by proposals and counterproposals in calls between Mr. McConnell and the Democratic leadership.
By Aug. 2, the two sides seemed relatively close to a deal. Mr. McConnell had agreed to some increased role for the secret court, a step that the administration considered a major concession, the White House and Congressional leaders said.
But that night, the talks broke down. With time running out, the Senate approved a Republican bill that omitted the stronger court oversight. The next day, the House passed the bill.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI | August 11, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — At a closed-door briefing in mid-July, senior intelligence officials startled lawmakers with some troubling news. American eavesdroppers were collecting just 25 percent of the foreign-based communications they had been receiving a few months earlier.
Congress needed to act quickly, intelligence officials said, to repair a dangerous situation.
Some lawmakers were alarmed. Others, jaded by past intelligence warnings, were skeptical.
The report helped set off a furious legislative rush last week that, improbably, broadened the administration’s authority to wiretap terrorism suspects without court oversight.
It was a surprising victory for the politically weakened White House on an issue that had plodded along in Congress for months without a clear sign of urgency or resolution. A flurry of talk in the last three weeks on intelligence gaps, heightened concern over terrorist attacks, burdensome court rulings and Congress’s recess helped turn the debate from a slow boil to a fever pitch.
For months, Democrats had refused to give the administration new wiretapping powers until the White House agreed to turn over documents about the National Security Agency program to eavesdrop on some Americans’ international communications without warrants.
The White House refused to back down, even after Congressional subpoenas were issued. The administration ultimately attracted the support it needed to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from moderate Democrats who felt pressed to act before the recess.
For the White House and its Republican allies, the decision by the Democratic-controlled Congress to act quickly was critical to safeguarding the country this summer as intelligence officials spoke of increasing “chatter” among Qaeda suspects.
To many Democrats who opposed the action, it was a reflection of fear mongering by the White House, and political capitulation by some fellow Democrats.
“There was an intentional manipulation of the facts to get this legislation through,” said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the plan.
The White House, Mr. Feingold said Friday in an interview, “has identified the one major remaining weakness in the Democratic Party, and that’s its unwillingness to stand up to the administration when it’s making a power grab regarding terrorism and national security.”
“They have figured out that all they have to do is start talking about an imminent terrorist threat, back it up against a Congressional recess, and they know the Democrats will cave,” he added.
Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, said the White House “very skillfully played the fear card.”
“With the chatter up in August,” Ms. Harman said, “the issue of FISA reform got traction. Then they ran out the clock.”
A White House official said the push was driven by genuine concerns by Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, for the government’s ability to conduct terrorist surveillance.
“There was no real argument on the need for a fix” between Democrats and Republicans, the White House official said. “He’s a straight shooter.”
The prelude to approval of the plan occurred in January, when the administration agreed to put the wiretapping program under the oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The court is charged with guarding against governmental spying abuses. Officials say one judge issued a ruling in January that allowed the administration to continue the program under the court’s supervision.
A ruling a month or two later — the judge who made it and its exact timing are not clear — restricted the government’s ability to intercept foreign-to-foreign communications passing through telecommunication “switches” on American soil.
The security agency was newly required to seek warrants to monitor at least some of those phone calls and e-mail messages. As a result, the ability to intercept foreign-based communications “kept getting ratcheted down,” said a senior intelligence official who insisted on anonymity because the account involved classified material. “ We were to a point where we were not effectively operating.”
Mr. McConnell, lead negotiator for the administration in lobbying for the bill, said in an interview that the court’s restrictions had made his job much more difficult.
“It was crazy, because I’m sitting here signing out warrants on known Al Qaeda operatives that are killing Americans, doing foreign communications,” he said. “And the only reason I’m signing that warrant is because it touches the U.S. communications infrastructure. That’s what we fixed.”
In April, Mr. McConnell began talking with lawmakers in classified meetings about that “intelligence gap” and alluded to it publicly, too. At the time, the administration proposed sweeping measures to “modernize” the foreign surveillance law, a much broader proposal in some respects than what Congress approved.
The proposal was considered dead on arrival by some Democrats, who argued that the administration was overreaching and asking Congress to legislate blindly without access to documents on the legal history and operations of the program.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’ political problems, including questions about truthfulness in testimony on the eavesdropping, helped stall any action, in part because the administration wanted him to have oversight of the broadened wiretapping authorities.
When the administration proposed its revisions in April, “everyone kind of laughed at us,” said a Justice Department official who insisted on anonymity. “We got bludgeoned. People just said: ‘Are you kidding? We’re not even going to consider it.’ ”
The administration’s classified briefings on the “intelligence gap” grew more urgent. In May, members of the Intelligence Committees began hearing about specific cases in which eavesdroppers could not intercept certain communications, said Representative Heather A. Wilson, Republican of New Mexico.
By June and early July, Ms. Wilson said Friday in an interview, the scope of what intelligence officials were missing had grown “frighteningly large.”
“I begged my colleagues to act,” she said. “They did nothing for six weeks. They weren’t going to act unless they were forced to. So we started raising the pressure.”
Some Democrats reacted skeptically to the closed-door briefings by Mr. McConnell and other intelligence officials. Intelligence Committee members acknowledged that they learned in May that the secret court ruling had caused some problems, but it was not until last month that the administration reported the gaps.
“They changed that story,” a Democratic Congressional aide said, amid talk about a backlog in warrant applications.
By mid-July, Mr. McConnell’s briefings, coupled with the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, set the tone for a series of talks between the White House and Mr. McConnell’s office and Democratic Congressional leaders.
After learning of the intelligence problems, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, contacted the White House to discuss repairing them. On July 12, the White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, discussed the problem with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, a senior White House official said.
At first, some Democratic leaders favored amending the surveillance law in September. Mr. McConnell pressed for an immediate repair.
Two weeks later, the administration lowered its sights, slimming its original 66-page proposal to 11 pages and eliminating some of the controversial plans like broad immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that aided eavesdropping.
Congressional Democrats effectively agreed to try to forge a narrow bill to address the foreign problem that Mr. McConnell identified. But they were at odds over a critical detail, the court oversight.
Democratic leaders did not demand that the security agency seek individual court warrants for eavesdropping. But they did want the court to review and approve the agency procedures soon after surveillance began.
The administration, however, wanted the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to approve the surveillance, with the court weighing in just to certify that no abuses occurred, and only long after the surveillance had been conducted.
The talks intensified in the days before the recess last weekend, highlighted by proposals and counterproposals in calls between Mr. McConnell and the Democratic leadership.
By Aug. 2, the two sides seemed relatively close to a deal. Mr. McConnell had agreed to some increased role for the secret court, a step that the administration considered a major concession, the White House and Congressional leaders said.
But that night, the talks broke down. With time running out, the Senate approved a Republican bill that omitted the stronger court oversight. The next day, the House passed the bill.
NYT : Bush Signs Law Widening Reach for Wiretapping
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Bush Signs Law Widening Reach for Wiretapping
By JAMES RISEN | August 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 — President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.
Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.
They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.
“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.
Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.
Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.
By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants — latching on to those giant switches — as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas.
For example, if a person in Indianapolis calls someone in London, the National Security Agency can eavesdrop on that conversation without a warrant, as long as the N.S.A.’s target is the person in London.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said Sunday in an interview that the new law went beyond fixing the foreign-to-foreign problem, potentially allowing the government to listen to Americans calling overseas.
But he stressed that the objective of the new law is to give the government greater flexibility in focusing on foreign suspects overseas, not to go after Americans.
“It’s foreign, that’s the point,” Mr. Fratto said. “What you want to make sure is that you are getting the foreign target.”
The legislation to change the surveillance act was rushed through both the House and Senate in the last days before the August recess began.
The White House’s push for the change was driven in part by a still-classified ruling earlier this year by the special intelligence court, which said the government needed to seek court-approved warrants to monitor those international calls going through American switches.
The new law, which is intended as a stopgap and expires in six months, also represents a power shift in terms of the oversight and regulation of government surveillance.
The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. The court’s only role will be to review and approve the procedures used by the government in the surveillance after it has been conducted. It will not scrutinize the cases of the individuals being monitored.
The law also gave the administration greater power to force telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.
Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that some telecommunications company officials had told Congressional leaders that they were unhappy with that provision in the bill and might challenge the new law in court. The aides said the telecommunications companies had told lawmakers that they would rather have a court-approved warrant ordering them to comply.
In fact, pressure from the telecommunications companies on the Bush administration has apparently played a major hidden role in the political battle over the surveillance issue over the past few months.
In January, the administration placed the N.S.A.’s warrantless wiretapping program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and subjected it for the first time to the scrutiny of the FISA court.
Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that they believed that pressure from major telecommunications companies on the White House was a major factor in persuading the Bush administration to do that. Those companies were facing major lawsuits for having secretly cooperated with the warrantless wiretapping program, and now wanted greater legal protections before cooperating further.
But the change suddenly swamped the court with an enormous volume of search warrant applications, leading, in turn, to the administration’s decision to seek the new legislation.
By JAMES RISEN | August 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 — President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.
Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.
They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.
“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.
Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.
Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.
By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants — latching on to those giant switches — as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas.
For example, if a person in Indianapolis calls someone in London, the National Security Agency can eavesdrop on that conversation without a warrant, as long as the N.S.A.’s target is the person in London.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said Sunday in an interview that the new law went beyond fixing the foreign-to-foreign problem, potentially allowing the government to listen to Americans calling overseas.
But he stressed that the objective of the new law is to give the government greater flexibility in focusing on foreign suspects overseas, not to go after Americans.
“It’s foreign, that’s the point,” Mr. Fratto said. “What you want to make sure is that you are getting the foreign target.”
The legislation to change the surveillance act was rushed through both the House and Senate in the last days before the August recess began.
The White House’s push for the change was driven in part by a still-classified ruling earlier this year by the special intelligence court, which said the government needed to seek court-approved warrants to monitor those international calls going through American switches.
The new law, which is intended as a stopgap and expires in six months, also represents a power shift in terms of the oversight and regulation of government surveillance.
The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. The court’s only role will be to review and approve the procedures used by the government in the surveillance after it has been conducted. It will not scrutinize the cases of the individuals being monitored.
The law also gave the administration greater power to force telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.
Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that some telecommunications company officials had told Congressional leaders that they were unhappy with that provision in the bill and might challenge the new law in court. The aides said the telecommunications companies had told lawmakers that they would rather have a court-approved warrant ordering them to comply.
In fact, pressure from the telecommunications companies on the Bush administration has apparently played a major hidden role in the political battle over the surveillance issue over the past few months.
In January, the administration placed the N.S.A.’s warrantless wiretapping program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and subjected it for the first time to the scrutiny of the FISA court.
Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that they believed that pressure from major telecommunications companies on the White House was a major factor in persuading the Bush administration to do that. Those companies were facing major lawsuits for having secretly cooperated with the warrantless wiretapping program, and now wanted greater legal protections before cooperating further.
But the change suddenly swamped the court with an enormous volume of search warrant applications, leading, in turn, to the administration’s decision to seek the new legislation.
Newsweek : Looking For a Leaker
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Looking For a Leaker
Michael Isikoff | Newsweek | Aug. 13, 2007 issue
The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer.
The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files.
Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media.
The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.")
A veteran federal prosecutor who left DOJ last year, Tamm worked at OIPR during a critical period in 2004 when senior Justice officials first strongly objected to the surveillance program. Those protests led to a crisis that March when, according to recent Senate testimony, then A.G. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and others threatened to resign, prompting Bush to scale the program back. Tamm, said one of the legal sources, had shared concerns about he program's legality, but it was unclear whether he actively participated in the internal DOJ protest.
The FBI raid on Tamm's home comes when Gonzales himself is facing criticism for allegedly misleading Congress by denying there had been "serious disagreement" within Justice about the surveillance program. The A.G. last week apologized for "creating confusion," but Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy said he is weighing asking Justice's inspector general to review Gonzales's testimony.
The raid also came while the White House and Congress were battling over expanding NSA wiretapping authority in order to plug purported "surveillance gaps." James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the raid was "amazing" and shows the administration's misplaced priorities: using FBI agents to track down leakers instead of processing intel warrants to close the gaps. A Justice spokesman declined to comment.
Michael Isikoff | Newsweek | Aug. 13, 2007 issue
The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer.
The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files.
Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media.
The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.")
A veteran federal prosecutor who left DOJ last year, Tamm worked at OIPR during a critical period in 2004 when senior Justice officials first strongly objected to the surveillance program. Those protests led to a crisis that March when, according to recent Senate testimony, then A.G. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and others threatened to resign, prompting Bush to scale the program back. Tamm, said one of the legal sources, had shared concerns about he program's legality, but it was unclear whether he actively participated in the internal DOJ protest.
The FBI raid on Tamm's home comes when Gonzales himself is facing criticism for allegedly misleading Congress by denying there had been "serious disagreement" within Justice about the surveillance program. The A.G. last week apologized for "creating confusion," but Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy said he is weighing asking Justice's inspector general to review Gonzales's testimony.
The raid also came while the White House and Congress were battling over expanding NSA wiretapping authority in order to plug purported "surveillance gaps." James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the raid was "amazing" and shows the administration's misplaced priorities: using FBI agents to track down leakers instead of processing intel warrants to close the gaps. A Justice spokesman declined to comment.
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Reuters : Congress yields to pass Bush spying bill
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Congress yields to pass Bush spying bill
By Thomas Ferraro | August 4, 2007
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Congress yielded to President George W. Bush on Saturday and approved legislation to temporarily expand the government's power to conduct electronic surveillance without a court order in tracking foreign suspects.
Civil liberties groups charged the measure would create a broad net that would sweep up law-abiding U.S. citizens. But the House of Representatives gave its concurrence to the bill, 227-183, a day after it won Senate approval, 60-28.
"After months of prodding by House Republicans, Congress has finally closed the terrorist loophole in our surveillance law -- and America will be the safer for it," declared House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.
"We think it is not the bill that ought to pass," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. But Hoyer conceded he and fellow Democrats were unable to stop the measure after a showdown with the White House amid warnings of possible attacks on the United States.
With lawmakers set to begin a month-long recess this weekend, Bush had called on them to stay until they passed the legislation.
"Protecting America is our most solemn obligation," Bush said earlier in the day in urging Congress to send him the bill so he could sign it into law.
The measure would authorize the National Security Agency to intercept without a court order communications between people in the United States and foreign targets overseas.
The administration would have to submit to a secret court a description of the procedures they used to determine that warrantless surveillance only targeted people outside the United States.
The court, created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), would review the procedures and order changes, if needed. The administration could appeal.
MEASURE EXPIRES IN SIX MONTHS
FISA now requires the government to obtain orders from its court to conduct surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States.
But after the September 11 attacks, Bush authorized warrantless interception of communications between people in the United States and others overseas if one had suspected terrorist ties. Critics charged that program violated the law, but Bush argued he had wartime powers to do so.
In January, Bush put the program under the supervision of the FISA court, but the terms have not been made public. Congress has subpoenaed documents in an effort to determine Bush's legal justification for the warrantless surveillance.
The new bill was needed in part, aides said, because of restrictions recently imposed by the secret court on the ability of spy agencies to intercept communications.
Final passage of the bill came a day after Republicans rejected Democratic alternatives that would have provided greater court supervision.
The measure is to expire in six months. Lawmakers are to come up with permanent legislation in the meantime.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said he needed the measure "in order to protect the nation from attacks that are being planned today to inflict mass casualties on the United States."
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, opposed the bill, saying, "Sadly, Congress has been stampeded by fear-mongering and deception into signing away our rights."
"With the President set to sign this bill into law, I do not believe we will soon be able to undo this damage," Nadler said. "Rights given away are not easily regained."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who broke ranks with many fellow Democrats to vote for the measure, said: "We are living in a period of heightened vulnerability and must give the intelligence community the tools they need."
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
By Thomas Ferraro | August 4, 2007
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Congress yielded to President George W. Bush on Saturday and approved legislation to temporarily expand the government's power to conduct electronic surveillance without a court order in tracking foreign suspects.
Civil liberties groups charged the measure would create a broad net that would sweep up law-abiding U.S. citizens. But the House of Representatives gave its concurrence to the bill, 227-183, a day after it won Senate approval, 60-28.
"After months of prodding by House Republicans, Congress has finally closed the terrorist loophole in our surveillance law -- and America will be the safer for it," declared House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.
"We think it is not the bill that ought to pass," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. But Hoyer conceded he and fellow Democrats were unable to stop the measure after a showdown with the White House amid warnings of possible attacks on the United States.
With lawmakers set to begin a month-long recess this weekend, Bush had called on them to stay until they passed the legislation.
"Protecting America is our most solemn obligation," Bush said earlier in the day in urging Congress to send him the bill so he could sign it into law.
The measure would authorize the National Security Agency to intercept without a court order communications between people in the United States and foreign targets overseas.
The administration would have to submit to a secret court a description of the procedures they used to determine that warrantless surveillance only targeted people outside the United States.
The court, created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), would review the procedures and order changes, if needed. The administration could appeal.
MEASURE EXPIRES IN SIX MONTHS
FISA now requires the government to obtain orders from its court to conduct surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States.
But after the September 11 attacks, Bush authorized warrantless interception of communications between people in the United States and others overseas if one had suspected terrorist ties. Critics charged that program violated the law, but Bush argued he had wartime powers to do so.
In January, Bush put the program under the supervision of the FISA court, but the terms have not been made public. Congress has subpoenaed documents in an effort to determine Bush's legal justification for the warrantless surveillance.
The new bill was needed in part, aides said, because of restrictions recently imposed by the secret court on the ability of spy agencies to intercept communications.
Final passage of the bill came a day after Republicans rejected Democratic alternatives that would have provided greater court supervision.
The measure is to expire in six months. Lawmakers are to come up with permanent legislation in the meantime.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said he needed the measure "in order to protect the nation from attacks that are being planned today to inflict mass casualties on the United States."
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, opposed the bill, saying, "Sadly, Congress has been stampeded by fear-mongering and deception into signing away our rights."
"With the President set to sign this bill into law, I do not believe we will soon be able to undo this damage," Nadler said. "Rights given away are not easily regained."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who broke ranks with many fellow Democrats to vote for the measure, said: "We are living in a period of heightened vulnerability and must give the intelligence community the tools they need."
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
NYT : House Passes Changes in Eavesdropping Program
Sunday, August 05, 2007
House Passes Changes in Eavesdropping Program
By CARL HULSE and EDMUND L. ANDREWS | August 5, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 — Under pressure from President Bush, the House gave final approval Saturday to changes in a terrorism surveillance program, despite serious objections from many Democrats about the scope of the executive branch’s new eavesdropping power.
Racing to complete a final rush of legislation before a scheduled monthlong break, the House voted 227 to 183 to endorse a measure the Bush administration said was needed to keep pace with communications technology in the effort to track terrorists overseas.
“The intelligence community is hampered in gathering essential information about terrorists,” said Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas.
The House Democratic leadership had severe reservations about the proposal and an overwhelming majority of Democrats opposed it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the measure “does violence to the Constitution of the United States.”
But with the Senate already in recess, Democrats confronted the choice of allowing the administration’s bill to reach the floor and be approved mainly by Republicans or letting it die.
If it had stalled, that would have left Democratic lawmakers, long anxious about appearing weak on national security issues, facing an August spent fending off charges from Republicans that they had left Americans exposed to threats.
Despite the political risks, many Democrats argued they should stand firm against the initiative, saying it granted the administration far too much latitude to initiate surveillance without judicial review.
They said the White House was using the specter of terrorism to weaken Americans’ privacy rights and give more power to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, an official Democrats say has proved himself untrustworthy.
“Legislation should not be passed in response to fear-mongering,” said Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey.
The legislation makes changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA.
There was no indication that lawmakers were responding to new intelligence warnings. Rather, Democrats were responding to administration pleas that a recent secret court ruling had created a legal obstacle in monitoring foreign communications relayed over the Internet.
They also appeared worried about the political repercussions of being perceived as interfering with intelligence gathering. But the disputes were significant enough that they are likely to resurface before the end of the year.
Democrats have expressed concerns that the administration is reaching for powers that go well beyond solving what officials have depicted as narrow technical issues in the current law.
In a statement issued late Saturday, Mr. Bush said he would “sign this legislation as soon as it gets to my desk.” The Senate approved its version of the bill on Friday.
In seeking changes to the surveillance program, the administration said it was being prevented from monitoring communications of terrorism suspects overseas in a period of apparently heightened activity. Other Republicans called for swift House action as well.
“I can’t imagine they would take a monthlong vacation without fulfilling their obligation to keep America safe,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said before the House approved the bill.
Senior House Democratic leaders said they were resigned to the measure, which will be in force for six months. But they said they would not wait that long before trying to come up with a more acceptable, permanent change in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“There is no way we are ever going to wait six months,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
The surveillance measure came up in the House late Saturday, after lawmakers had approved an energy efficiency measure and were preparing to pass a major Pentagon spending bill and approve $255 million for rebuilding the collapsed bridge in Minnesota.
In the final vote, 41 Democrats joined all but 2 Republicans in backing the measure; 181 Democrats opposed it.
Some Democrats complained they were being bullied into hasty action on the intelligence bill by the administration and Congressional Republicans. They said the House should stick with a proposal defeated Friday that kept more judicial control over the program than the administration wanted.
House Republicans pointed to Senate’s approval of the measure, which was supported by most Democratic members of the panel that oversees intelligence operations.
“If it is good enough for Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats, it should be good enough for House Democrats,” said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the second-ranking Republican.
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the Intelligence Committee, accused Democrats of dithering for months without giving “the intelligence community tools they need while we are at heightened risk.”
Administration officials had been quietly pushing Congress to pass a “modernization” of the current law, arguing that technological changes — especially the expansion of telephone calls over the Internet — had made the current rules outdated.
One major issue, apparently raised in secret by judges overseeing the program, is that many calls and e-mail messages between people outside the United States are routed over data networks that run through the United States.
In principle, the surveillance law does not restrict eavesdropping on foreign-to-foreign communications. But in practice, administration officials contend, the path of those calls through this country means the government cannot monitor them without a warrant.
But Democratic lawmakers have been deeply suspicious that the Bush administration was seeking a broader and more controversial expansion of surveillance authority by making changes that were vague on important issues.
Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday that the bill the administration wanted would allow wiretapping without warrants as long as it was “concerning a person abroad.” As a result, Mr. Reyes said, the law could be construed as allowing any search inside the United States as long as the government claimed it “concerned” Al Qaeda.
Democrats said their suspicions had been fueled in part by the White House’s repeated reluctance to ask Congress for technical changes addressing issues that should have been apparent long ago.
In a recent letter to a Republican on the committee, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, Mr. Reyes noted that Congress had updated the FISA law eight times since the Sept. 11 attacks.
“You repeatedly claim that FISA is woefully outdated,” Mr. Reyes wrote. “Neither you nor the administration raised concerns during consideration of those bills that the statutory changes proposed were inadequate.”
For years, but especially since the attacks, Democrats on the intelligence oversight committees have been loath to do anything that might provoke charges of tying up the intelligence agencies in “outdated” restrictions.
But relations have steadily soured since the public disclosure of the warrantless surveillance program 18 months ago. White House officials have repeatedly argued that the president has broad authority to carry out such programs without explicit permission from Congress, even if the programs appear to violate long-standing legal restrictions.
The mistrust has gone in both directions. Administration officials contend that any effort to have Congress address even straightforward issues prompts Democrats to seek all manner of new restrictions.
But Democrats, and some Republicans, say the administration has worsened the distrust by refusing to be provide detailed information to lawmakers and by offering what appear to have been misleading answers to Congressional queries.
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has criticized Mr. Gonzales, the attorney general, for insisting that the Justice Department never had any internal disputes about the legality of the surveillance program.
Several top Justice Department officials, including the director of the F.B.I., Robert S. Mueller III, have publicly contradicted Mr. Gonzales’s testimony and told lawmakers that senior officials threatened in 2004 to resign over the disputes.
By CARL HULSE and EDMUND L. ANDREWS | August 5, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 — Under pressure from President Bush, the House gave final approval Saturday to changes in a terrorism surveillance program, despite serious objections from many Democrats about the scope of the executive branch’s new eavesdropping power.
Racing to complete a final rush of legislation before a scheduled monthlong break, the House voted 227 to 183 to endorse a measure the Bush administration said was needed to keep pace with communications technology in the effort to track terrorists overseas.
“The intelligence community is hampered in gathering essential information about terrorists,” said Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas.
The House Democratic leadership had severe reservations about the proposal and an overwhelming majority of Democrats opposed it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the measure “does violence to the Constitution of the United States.”
But with the Senate already in recess, Democrats confronted the choice of allowing the administration’s bill to reach the floor and be approved mainly by Republicans or letting it die.
If it had stalled, that would have left Democratic lawmakers, long anxious about appearing weak on national security issues, facing an August spent fending off charges from Republicans that they had left Americans exposed to threats.
Despite the political risks, many Democrats argued they should stand firm against the initiative, saying it granted the administration far too much latitude to initiate surveillance without judicial review.
They said the White House was using the specter of terrorism to weaken Americans’ privacy rights and give more power to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, an official Democrats say has proved himself untrustworthy.
“Legislation should not be passed in response to fear-mongering,” said Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey.
The legislation makes changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA.
There was no indication that lawmakers were responding to new intelligence warnings. Rather, Democrats were responding to administration pleas that a recent secret court ruling had created a legal obstacle in monitoring foreign communications relayed over the Internet.
They also appeared worried about the political repercussions of being perceived as interfering with intelligence gathering. But the disputes were significant enough that they are likely to resurface before the end of the year.
Democrats have expressed concerns that the administration is reaching for powers that go well beyond solving what officials have depicted as narrow technical issues in the current law.
In a statement issued late Saturday, Mr. Bush said he would “sign this legislation as soon as it gets to my desk.” The Senate approved its version of the bill on Friday.
In seeking changes to the surveillance program, the administration said it was being prevented from monitoring communications of terrorism suspects overseas in a period of apparently heightened activity. Other Republicans called for swift House action as well.
“I can’t imagine they would take a monthlong vacation without fulfilling their obligation to keep America safe,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said before the House approved the bill.
Senior House Democratic leaders said they were resigned to the measure, which will be in force for six months. But they said they would not wait that long before trying to come up with a more acceptable, permanent change in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“There is no way we are ever going to wait six months,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
The surveillance measure came up in the House late Saturday, after lawmakers had approved an energy efficiency measure and were preparing to pass a major Pentagon spending bill and approve $255 million for rebuilding the collapsed bridge in Minnesota.
In the final vote, 41 Democrats joined all but 2 Republicans in backing the measure; 181 Democrats opposed it.
Some Democrats complained they were being bullied into hasty action on the intelligence bill by the administration and Congressional Republicans. They said the House should stick with a proposal defeated Friday that kept more judicial control over the program than the administration wanted.
House Republicans pointed to Senate’s approval of the measure, which was supported by most Democratic members of the panel that oversees intelligence operations.
“If it is good enough for Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats, it should be good enough for House Democrats,” said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the second-ranking Republican.
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the Intelligence Committee, accused Democrats of dithering for months without giving “the intelligence community tools they need while we are at heightened risk.”
Administration officials had been quietly pushing Congress to pass a “modernization” of the current law, arguing that technological changes — especially the expansion of telephone calls over the Internet — had made the current rules outdated.
One major issue, apparently raised in secret by judges overseeing the program, is that many calls and e-mail messages between people outside the United States are routed over data networks that run through the United States.
In principle, the surveillance law does not restrict eavesdropping on foreign-to-foreign communications. But in practice, administration officials contend, the path of those calls through this country means the government cannot monitor them without a warrant.
But Democratic lawmakers have been deeply suspicious that the Bush administration was seeking a broader and more controversial expansion of surveillance authority by making changes that were vague on important issues.
Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday that the bill the administration wanted would allow wiretapping without warrants as long as it was “concerning a person abroad.” As a result, Mr. Reyes said, the law could be construed as allowing any search inside the United States as long as the government claimed it “concerned” Al Qaeda.
Democrats said their suspicions had been fueled in part by the White House’s repeated reluctance to ask Congress for technical changes addressing issues that should have been apparent long ago.
In a recent letter to a Republican on the committee, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, Mr. Reyes noted that Congress had updated the FISA law eight times since the Sept. 11 attacks.
“You repeatedly claim that FISA is woefully outdated,” Mr. Reyes wrote. “Neither you nor the administration raised concerns during consideration of those bills that the statutory changes proposed were inadequate.”
For years, but especially since the attacks, Democrats on the intelligence oversight committees have been loath to do anything that might provoke charges of tying up the intelligence agencies in “outdated” restrictions.
But relations have steadily soured since the public disclosure of the warrantless surveillance program 18 months ago. White House officials have repeatedly argued that the president has broad authority to carry out such programs without explicit permission from Congress, even if the programs appear to violate long-standing legal restrictions.
The mistrust has gone in both directions. Administration officials contend that any effort to have Congress address even straightforward issues prompts Democrats to seek all manner of new restrictions.
But Democrats, and some Republicans, say the administration has worsened the distrust by refusing to be provide detailed information to lawmakers and by offering what appear to have been misleading answers to Congressional queries.
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has criticized Mr. Gonzales, the attorney general, for insisting that the Justice Department never had any internal disputes about the legality of the surveillance program.
Several top Justice Department officials, including the director of the F.B.I., Robert S. Mueller III, have publicly contradicted Mr. Gonzales’s testimony and told lawmakers that senior officials threatened in 2004 to resign over the disputes.
NYT : Bush Urges House to Approve Spying Measure
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Bush Urges House to Approve Spying Measure
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | August 4, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House on Saturday delayed action on a Senate-passed bill to expand the government's abilities to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States.
Lawmakers in both parties said they expected the measure to pass late Saturday or early Sunday.
The bill would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. It would give the government leeway to intercept, without warrants, communications between foreigners that are routed through equipment in United States, provided that ''foreign intelligence information'' is at stake.
President Bush has described the effort as an anti-terrorist program, but the bill is not limited to terror suspects and could have wider applications, some lawmakers said.
The government long has had substantial powers to intercept purely foreign communications that don't touch U.S. soil.
If a U.S. resident becomes the chief target of surveillance, the government would have to obtain a warrant from the special FISA court.
Bush and his allies demanded that Congress approve the FISA changes before starting its August recess. ''Al-Qaida is not going on vacation this month,'' said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Congressional Democrats won a few concessions in negotiations earlier in the week. New wiretaps must be approved by the director of national intelligence and the attorney general, not just the attorney general. Congress has battled with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on several issues, and some Democrats have accused him of perjury.
The new law would expire in six months unless Congress renewed it. The administration wanted the changes to be permanent.
Many congressional Democrats wanted tighter restrictions on government surveillance, but yielded in the face of Bush's veto threats and the impending August break.
The administration began pressing for changes to the law after a recent ruling by the FISA court. That decision barred the government from eavesdropping without warrants on foreign suspects whose messages were being routed through U.S. communications carriers, including Internet sites.
------
The bill is S 1927.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | August 4, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House on Saturday delayed action on a Senate-passed bill to expand the government's abilities to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States.
Lawmakers in both parties said they expected the measure to pass late Saturday or early Sunday.
The bill would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. It would give the government leeway to intercept, without warrants, communications between foreigners that are routed through equipment in United States, provided that ''foreign intelligence information'' is at stake.
President Bush has described the effort as an anti-terrorist program, but the bill is not limited to terror suspects and could have wider applications, some lawmakers said.
The government long has had substantial powers to intercept purely foreign communications that don't touch U.S. soil.
If a U.S. resident becomes the chief target of surveillance, the government would have to obtain a warrant from the special FISA court.
Bush and his allies demanded that Congress approve the FISA changes before starting its August recess. ''Al-Qaida is not going on vacation this month,'' said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Congressional Democrats won a few concessions in negotiations earlier in the week. New wiretaps must be approved by the director of national intelligence and the attorney general, not just the attorney general. Congress has battled with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on several issues, and some Democrats have accused him of perjury.
The new law would expire in six months unless Congress renewed it. The administration wanted the changes to be permanent.
Many congressional Democrats wanted tighter restrictions on government surveillance, but yielded in the face of Bush's veto threats and the impending August break.
The administration began pressing for changes to the law after a recent ruling by the FISA court. That decision barred the government from eavesdropping without warrants on foreign suspects whose messages were being routed through U.S. communications carriers, including Internet sites.
------
The bill is S 1927.
NYT : Broader Spying Authority Advances in Congress
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Broader Spying Authority Advances in Congress
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MARK MAZZETTI | August 4, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 — A furious push by the White House to broaden its wiretapping authority appeared on the verge of victory on Friday night after the Senate approved a measure that would temporarily give the administration more latitude to eavesdrop without court warrants on foreign communications that it suspects may be tied to terrorism.
The House is expected to take up the White House-backed measure on Saturday morning before going into its summer recess.
Democratic leaders acknowledged that the bill would probably pass.
Democrats in both the House and the Senate failed to pass competing measures on Friday that would have included tougher judicial checks and oversight on the eavesdropping powers.
The White House and Congressional Republicans hailed the Senate vote as critical to plugging what they saw as dangerous gaps in the intelligence agencies’ ability to detect terrorist threats.
“I can sleep a little safer tonight,” Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who co-sponsored the measure, declared after the Senate vote.
The measure approved by the Senate expires in six months and would have to be re-authorized. The White House’s grudging agreement to make it temporary helped to attract the votes of some moderate Democrats who said they thought it was important for Congress to approve some version of the wiretapping bill before its recess.
The White House and Republican leaders pressed the point throughout the day that a vote against the measure would put the nation at greater risk of attack.
Some Democrats and civil rights advocates accused the Senate of capitulating to White House demands by broadening the ability to eavesdrop without warrants on communications that are primarily “foreign” in nature, even if they may touch on Americans’ phone calls and e-mail.
The measure “goes far, far beyond” the National Security Agency program that the president secretly approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.
Caroline Frederickson, head of the American Civil Liberties Union office here, said: “The Democrats caved in to the politics of fear we’re seeing from this administration. They didn’t want to be depicted as soft on terrorism. But this measure removes any court oversight from surveillance on Americans in a large number of cases.”
The White House lobbying took on new urgency because of a still-classified ruling by the intelligence court this year that placed new restrictions on monitoring without warrants purely foreign communications that are routed through the United States.
Such communications were once considered outside the reach of the court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the FISA court.
“Time is short,” Mr. Bush warned in an appearance at the F.B.I. headquarters. “I’m going to ask Congress to stay in session until they pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States.”
In an unusual maneuver, Senator Bond pressed the case for new legislative authority by reading on the Senate floor, apparently to the surprise of some administration officials, an e-mail message that the office of the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, sent to Congressional leaders on the urgency of amending the wiretapping law.
“We understand that the FISA court judges urgently support a more appropriate alignment of the court’s caseload and jurisdiction away from the focus on non-U.S. persons operating outside of the United States,” the message said. “The judges have clearly expressed frustration with the fact that so much of their docket is consumed by applications that focus on foreign targets and involve minimal privacy interests of Americans.”
Court officials and Mr. McConnell’s office refused to comment on the message. The concerns from his office appeared to reflect, at least in part, the recent restrictions imposed by the court on intercepting what is known as “foreign-to-foreign transit traffic,” in which both parties are outside the United States but the phone calls or e-mail messages are routed through telecommunications centers in the United States.
For years, judges on the court have debated whether and under what circumstances communications that happened to pass through United States “switches” should be governed by American intelligence laws.
The FISA court ruling was alluded to by the House minority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, on Tuesday on the Fox News Channel. The Los Angeles Times published the details on Thursday.
Conflicting accounts emerged on Friday about the nature of the restrictions and what effects they have had on current intelligence operations. The ruling remains classified.
On Fox News, Mr. Boehner, said, “There’s been a ruling over the last four or five months that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States.”
A spokesman for Mr. Boehner said Friday that he was not discussing any classified rulings by the court, but was referring to a plan the administration announced in January to put under the court’s jurisdiction the National Security Agency wiretapping program.
Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MARK MAZZETTI | August 4, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 — A furious push by the White House to broaden its wiretapping authority appeared on the verge of victory on Friday night after the Senate approved a measure that would temporarily give the administration more latitude to eavesdrop without court warrants on foreign communications that it suspects may be tied to terrorism.
The House is expected to take up the White House-backed measure on Saturday morning before going into its summer recess.
Democratic leaders acknowledged that the bill would probably pass.
Democrats in both the House and the Senate failed to pass competing measures on Friday that would have included tougher judicial checks and oversight on the eavesdropping powers.
The White House and Congressional Republicans hailed the Senate vote as critical to plugging what they saw as dangerous gaps in the intelligence agencies’ ability to detect terrorist threats.
“I can sleep a little safer tonight,” Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who co-sponsored the measure, declared after the Senate vote.
The measure approved by the Senate expires in six months and would have to be re-authorized. The White House’s grudging agreement to make it temporary helped to attract the votes of some moderate Democrats who said they thought it was important for Congress to approve some version of the wiretapping bill before its recess.
The White House and Republican leaders pressed the point throughout the day that a vote against the measure would put the nation at greater risk of attack.
Some Democrats and civil rights advocates accused the Senate of capitulating to White House demands by broadening the ability to eavesdrop without warrants on communications that are primarily “foreign” in nature, even if they may touch on Americans’ phone calls and e-mail.
The measure “goes far, far beyond” the National Security Agency program that the president secretly approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.
Caroline Frederickson, head of the American Civil Liberties Union office here, said: “The Democrats caved in to the politics of fear we’re seeing from this administration. They didn’t want to be depicted as soft on terrorism. But this measure removes any court oversight from surveillance on Americans in a large number of cases.”
The White House lobbying took on new urgency because of a still-classified ruling by the intelligence court this year that placed new restrictions on monitoring without warrants purely foreign communications that are routed through the United States.
Such communications were once considered outside the reach of the court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the FISA court.
“Time is short,” Mr. Bush warned in an appearance at the F.B.I. headquarters. “I’m going to ask Congress to stay in session until they pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States.”
In an unusual maneuver, Senator Bond pressed the case for new legislative authority by reading on the Senate floor, apparently to the surprise of some administration officials, an e-mail message that the office of the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, sent to Congressional leaders on the urgency of amending the wiretapping law.
“We understand that the FISA court judges urgently support a more appropriate alignment of the court’s caseload and jurisdiction away from the focus on non-U.S. persons operating outside of the United States,” the message said. “The judges have clearly expressed frustration with the fact that so much of their docket is consumed by applications that focus on foreign targets and involve minimal privacy interests of Americans.”
Court officials and Mr. McConnell’s office refused to comment on the message. The concerns from his office appeared to reflect, at least in part, the recent restrictions imposed by the court on intercepting what is known as “foreign-to-foreign transit traffic,” in which both parties are outside the United States but the phone calls or e-mail messages are routed through telecommunications centers in the United States.
For years, judges on the court have debated whether and under what circumstances communications that happened to pass through United States “switches” should be governed by American intelligence laws.
The FISA court ruling was alluded to by the House minority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, on Tuesday on the Fox News Channel. The Los Angeles Times published the details on Thursday.
Conflicting accounts emerged on Friday about the nature of the restrictions and what effects they have had on current intelligence operations. The ruling remains classified.
On Fox News, Mr. Boehner, said, “There’s been a ruling over the last four or five months that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States.”
A spokesman for Mr. Boehner said Friday that he was not discussing any classified rulings by the court, but was referring to a plan the administration announced in January to put under the court’s jurisdiction the National Security Agency wiretapping program.
Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.
Dallas News : Bush: Congress must stay put until surveillance bill approved
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Bush: Congress must stay put until surveillance bill approved
Associated Press | August 3, 2007
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners.
"So far the Democrats in Congress have not drafted a bill I can sign," Bush said at FBI headquarters, where he was meeting with counterterror and homeland security officials. "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. Time is short."
The president said lawmakers cannot leave for their August recess this weekend as planned unless they "pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States."
Bush has the authority under the Constitution to call Congress back into session once it has recessed or adjourned, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perrino said talk of him doing that is premature.
"We cannot imagine that Congress would leave without fixing the problem," she said.
As of early afternoon, however, it was clear that no deal was imminent.
"It's up in the air; I think we're going to be here for awhile," Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said upon emerging from a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats on the issue.
Sen. Kit Bond, top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said the White House's offer included several concessions; among them to let the plan expire in six months, giving lawmakers time to work out a more comprehensive law.
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell "has put on the table this last best offer," Bond said.
Earlier Friday, the White House offered an eleventh-hour accord to Democrats in the negotiations over the matter, saying it would agree to a court review of its foreign intelligence activities instead of leaving certification up to the attorney general and director of national intelligence.
But it attached several conditions that could be unacceptable to Democrats: that the review would only be after-the-fact and would only involve the administration's general process of collecting the intelligence, not individual cases, said a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss internal deliberations.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said other issues in the dispute include whether the new eavesdropping powers Bush wants be made permanent -- or temporary -- and whether this new authority could be used against intelligence targets other than al-Qaida terrorists, such as Iran or Syria.
Bush said the administration offer is a "a narrow and targeted piece of legislation that will close the gaps in intelligence."
"This is what we need to do our job to protect the American people," the president said. "It's the bare minimum."
The two sides, however, still are far from striking a deal on what all agree needs to happen, and soon: an update of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
At issue is how the government would spy on foreign terror suspects overseas without invading Americans' privacy rights. Democrats want the special FISA Court to review the eavesdropping process to make sure the surveillance does not focus on communications that might be sent to and from Americans.
The law now generally requires court review of government surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States. It does not specifically address the government's ability to intercept messages believed to come from suspects who are overseas, opening what the White House considers a significant gap in protecting against attacks by foreigners targeting the U.S.
Negotiations broke off shortly before midnight Thursday and resumed Friday morning.
In a statement late Thursday, McConnell said he would agree to a review by the FISA court, but only after the surveillance had begun, not before as some Democrats are demanding.
"To acknowledge the interests of all, I could agree to a procedure that provides for court review -- after needed collection has begun -- of our procedures for gathering foreign intelligence through classified methods directed at foreigners located overseas," McConnell wrote.
"While I would strongly prefer not to engage in such a process, I am prepared to take these additional steps to keep the confidence of members of Congress and the American people that our processes have been subject to court review and approval," he wrote.
The FISA court review would happen 120 days after the surveillance began, another senior administration official said Friday. Until then, McConnell and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would oversee and approve the process of targeting foreign terrorists, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing negotiations.
The administration is demanding that this apply to monitoring of all foreign targets, no matter whether they end up communicating with another foreigner or someone in the U.S, and no matter whether they are a suspected terrorist or a target for some other reason, said the first official.
Democrats leery of Gonzales' involvement said that seemed far too long a period of time before the FISA court could step in.
Bush said that he would judge any bill sent to him by one measure alone: McConnell's judgment as to whether it provides "what you need to prevent an attack on the country."
"If the answer's `no,' I'm going to veto the bill," he said.
The urgent push to update FISA may stem from a recent ruling by the court that oversees it, according to remarks earlier this week by House Republican Leader John Boehner during an interview with Fox News.
"There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States," said Boehner, going further that most officials have in explaining the pressing need for change.
Associated Press | August 3, 2007
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners.
"So far the Democrats in Congress have not drafted a bill I can sign," Bush said at FBI headquarters, where he was meeting with counterterror and homeland security officials. "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. Time is short."
The president said lawmakers cannot leave for their August recess this weekend as planned unless they "pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States."
Bush has the authority under the Constitution to call Congress back into session once it has recessed or adjourned, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perrino said talk of him doing that is premature.
"We cannot imagine that Congress would leave without fixing the problem," she said.
As of early afternoon, however, it was clear that no deal was imminent.
"It's up in the air; I think we're going to be here for awhile," Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said upon emerging from a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats on the issue.
Sen. Kit Bond, top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said the White House's offer included several concessions; among them to let the plan expire in six months, giving lawmakers time to work out a more comprehensive law.
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell "has put on the table this last best offer," Bond said.
Earlier Friday, the White House offered an eleventh-hour accord to Democrats in the negotiations over the matter, saying it would agree to a court review of its foreign intelligence activities instead of leaving certification up to the attorney general and director of national intelligence.
But it attached several conditions that could be unacceptable to Democrats: that the review would only be after-the-fact and would only involve the administration's general process of collecting the intelligence, not individual cases, said a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss internal deliberations.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said other issues in the dispute include whether the new eavesdropping powers Bush wants be made permanent -- or temporary -- and whether this new authority could be used against intelligence targets other than al-Qaida terrorists, such as Iran or Syria.
Bush said the administration offer is a "a narrow and targeted piece of legislation that will close the gaps in intelligence."
"This is what we need to do our job to protect the American people," the president said. "It's the bare minimum."
The two sides, however, still are far from striking a deal on what all agree needs to happen, and soon: an update of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
At issue is how the government would spy on foreign terror suspects overseas without invading Americans' privacy rights. Democrats want the special FISA Court to review the eavesdropping process to make sure the surveillance does not focus on communications that might be sent to and from Americans.
The law now generally requires court review of government surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States. It does not specifically address the government's ability to intercept messages believed to come from suspects who are overseas, opening what the White House considers a significant gap in protecting against attacks by foreigners targeting the U.S.
Negotiations broke off shortly before midnight Thursday and resumed Friday morning.
In a statement late Thursday, McConnell said he would agree to a review by the FISA court, but only after the surveillance had begun, not before as some Democrats are demanding.
"To acknowledge the interests of all, I could agree to a procedure that provides for court review -- after needed collection has begun -- of our procedures for gathering foreign intelligence through classified methods directed at foreigners located overseas," McConnell wrote.
"While I would strongly prefer not to engage in such a process, I am prepared to take these additional steps to keep the confidence of members of Congress and the American people that our processes have been subject to court review and approval," he wrote.
The FISA court review would happen 120 days after the surveillance began, another senior administration official said Friday. Until then, McConnell and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would oversee and approve the process of targeting foreign terrorists, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing negotiations.
The administration is demanding that this apply to monitoring of all foreign targets, no matter whether they end up communicating with another foreigner or someone in the U.S, and no matter whether they are a suspected terrorist or a target for some other reason, said the first official.
Democrats leery of Gonzales' involvement said that seemed far too long a period of time before the FISA court could step in.
Bush said that he would judge any bill sent to him by one measure alone: McConnell's judgment as to whether it provides "what you need to prevent an attack on the country."
"If the answer's `no,' I'm going to veto the bill," he said.
The urgent push to update FISA may stem from a recent ruling by the court that oversees it, according to remarks earlier this week by House Republican Leader John Boehner during an interview with Fox News.
"There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States," said Boehner, going further that most officials have in explaining the pressing need for change.
Filed under
Congress,
UK,
wiretapping
by Winter Patriot
on Saturday, August 04, 2007
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