US: House Passes Bill on Wiretap Powers
WASHINGTON - The House on The bill cleared the House by 293 to 129, with near-unanimous "Our intelligence officials must have the ability to monitor The Democratic majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer The issue has bitterly divided Democrats, as a sampling of remarks But Representative Jerrold Nadler, The vote followed months of wrangling and came a day after Democratic and Republican leaders reached agreement. The deal, expanding the government's powers to spy on terrorism The agreement would settle one of the thorniest issues in dispute by With AT&T and other telecommunications companies facing some 40 "The lawsuits will be dismissed," Representative Roy Blunt of The proposal - particularly the immunity provision - represents a major victory for the White House after months of dispute. "I think the White House got a better deal than even they had hoped to get," said Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, who led the negotiations. President Bush said on Friday morning that he was pleased about the The bill was supported by 188 Republicans and 105 Democrats in the While final passage seems almost certain, the plan will nonetheless The Senate Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid "Probably we can't take that out of the bill, but I'm going to try," Mr. Reid said. Another Democratic Senator, Russell D. Feingold But House Democratic leaders, who squared off against the White "It is the result of compromise, and like any compromise is not Perhaps the most important concession that Democratic leaders In the wiretapping program approved by Mr. Bush after the Sept. 11 Among other important provisions in the 114-page plan, Democrats Under a temporary plan that Congress approved last year, the court The wiretapping plan agreed upon Thursday would expire at the end of 2012, unless Congress renewed it. The proposal also seeks to plug what the Bush administration In targeting and wiretapping Americans, the administration would White House officials said that the new emergency provisions applied Under the current law, the government can conduct an emergency The arcane details of the proposal amount to a major overhaul of the On that score, the bipartisan proposal marks a clear victory for the White House and the phone companies. The proposal allows a district judge to examine what are believed to Even Democratic officials, who had initially opposed giving legal "No matter how they spin it, this is still immunity," said Kevin
Friday overwhelmingly approved a bill overhauling the rules on the
government's wiretapping powers and conferring what amounts to legal
immunity to the telephone companies that took part in President Bush's
program of eavesdropping without warrants after the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001.
support from Republicans and substantial backing from Democrats. It now
goes to the Senate, which is expected to pass it next week by a wide
margin.
terrorists suspected of plotting to kill Americans and to safeguard our
national security," said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader. "This bill gives it to them."
of Maryland, was considerably more restrained in his support of the
bill, calling it the best compromise possible "in the current
atmosphere."
after the vote made clear. "The FISA legislation we approved gives our
intelligence community the tools it needs and the public the civil
liberty protections it deserves," said Representative Rahm Emanuel
of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "While this bill
isn't perfect, the perfect should never be the enemy of the good. I
applaud the Democrats and Republicans who reached this compromise and
produced legislation that earned support from both sides of the aisle."
a New York Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on
the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, called the bill "a
fig leaf," and one that "abandons the Constitution's protections and
insulates lawless behavior from legal scrutiny."
suspects in some major respects, would strengthen the ability of
intelligence officials to eavesdrop on foreign targets. It would also
allow them to conduct emergency wiretaps without court orders on
American targets for a week if it is determined that important national
security information would otherwise be lost. If approved by the
Senate, as appears likely, the agreement would be the most significant
revision of surveillance law in 30 years.
providing immunity to the phone companies in the Sept. 11 program as
long as a federal district court determined that they received
legitimate requests from the government directing their participation
in the program of wiretapping without warrants.
lawsuits over their reported participation in the wiretapping program,
Republican leaders described this narrow court review on the immunity
question as a mere "formality."
Missouri, the No. 2 Republican in the House, predicted with confidence
on Thursday.
deal and the impending passage in Congress. "The enemy that struck us
on Sept. 11 is determined to strike us again," Mr. Bush said, urging
quick action by the Senate.
House, while 128 Democrats and a single Republican voted against it.
The contrary Republican was Representative Tim Johnson
of Illinois, described by the Almanac of American Politics as a
lawmaker "with maverick tendencies," as demonstrated by his opposition
to much of the Bush administration's record on the environment.
face continued opposition from lawmakers on both political wings, with
conservatives asserting that it includes too many checks on government
surveillance powers and liberals asserting that it gives legal sanction
to a wiretapping program that they maintain was illegal in the first
place.
of Nevada, said he would still resist the immunity section of the bill.
"I'm going to try real hard to have a separate vote on immunity," Mr.
Reid said on Friday in an interview to be aired this weekend on
Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital with Al Hunt."
of Wisconsin, who pushed unsuccessfully for more civil liberties
safeguards in the plan, called the deal "a capitulation" by his fellow
Democrats.
House for more than five months over the issue and allowed a temporary
surveillance measure to expire in February, called the plan a
hard-fought bargain that included needed checks on governmental abuse.
perfect, but I believe it strikes a sound balance," said Mr. Hoyer, who
helped draft the plan.
claimed was an affirmation that the intelligence restrictions were the
"exclusive" means for the executive branch to conduct wiretapping
operations in terrorism and espionage cases. Speaker Nancy Pelosi
had insisted on that element, and Democratic staff members asserted
that the language would prevent Mr. Bush, or any future president, from
circumventing the law. The proposal asserts "that the law is the
exclusive authority and not the whim of the president of the United
States," Ms. Pelosi said.
attacks, the White House asserted that the president had the
constitutional authority to act outside the courts in allowing the National Security Agency
to focus on the international communications of Americans with
suspected ties to terrorists and that Congress had implicitly
authorized that power when it voted to use military force against Al Qaeda.
also pointed to requirements that the inspectors general of several
agencies review the security agency's wiretapping program, that the
government obtain individual court orders to wiretap Americans who are
outside the United States and that the secret court overseeing wiretaps
give advance approval to the government's procedures for wiretapping
operations.
had to approve those procedures only months after wiretapping had begun.
maintained was a dangerous loophole by no longer requiring individual
warrants for wiretapping purely foreign communications, like phone
calls and e-mail messages that pass through American telecommunications
switches. The government would now be allowed to use broad warrants to
eavesdrop on large groups of foreign targets at once.
have to get individual court orders from the intelligence court, but in
"exigent" or emergency circumstances it would be able to go ahead for
at least seven days without a court order if it asserted that
"intelligence important to the national security of the United States
may be lost."
only to foreign wiretapping, but Democratic officials said they
interpreted the proposal to apply to domestic surveillance operations
as well.
wiretap for only three days, but Democrats maintained that the new
seven-day allowance included tougher standards for the government to
meet in asserting an emergency.
landmark surveillance law known as the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, which Congress passed in 1978 after the abuses of the
Watergate era. But much of the debate over the bill in the last six
months has been dominated by the separate question of whether to
protect the phone companies from legal liability for their role in the
eavesdropping program.
be dozens of written directives given by the Bush administration to the
phone companies after the Sept. 11 attacks authorizing them to engage
in wiretapping without warrants. If the court finds that such
directives were in fact provided to the companies that are being sued,
any lawsuits "shall be promptly dismissed," the proposal says.
immunity to the phone companies, conceded there was a high likelihood
that the lawsuits would have to be dismissed under the standards set
out in the proposal. That possibility infuriated civil liberties
groups, which said the cursory review by a district judge would amount
to the de facto death of the lawsuits.
Bankston, a senior lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
pro-privacy group that is a plaintiff suing over the wiretapping
program. "It's not compromise; it's pure theater."
- 208 Regulation