Articles
Washington Post: Scare Tactics and Our Surveillance Bill
02/25/2008
By Jay Rockefeller, Patrick Leahy, Silvestre Reyes and John
Conyers
Nothing is more important to the American people than our
safety and our freedom. As the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence
and judiciary committees, we have an enormous responsibility to protect both.
Unfortunately, instead of working with Congress to achieve
the best policies to keep our country safe, once again President Bush has
resorted to scare tactics and political games.
In November, the House passed legislation to give
Almost two weeks ago, the Senate passed similar legislation.
The Senate bill also contains a provision to grant retroactive legal immunity
to telecommunications companies that assisted the executive branch in
conducting surveillance programs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
While the four of us may have our differences on what
language a final bill should contain, we agree on several points.
First, our country did not "go dark" on Feb. 16
when the Protect America Act (PAA) expired. Despite President Bush's overheated
rhetoric on this issue, the government's orders under that act will last until
at least August. These orders could cover every known terrorist group and
foreign target. No surveillance stopped. If a new member of a known group, a
new phone number or a new e-mail address is identified,
As Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein acknowledged
while speaking to reporters on Feb. 14, "the directives are in force for a
year, and with the expiration of the PAA, the directives that are in force
remain in force until the end of that year. . . . [W]e'll be able to continue
doing surveillance based on those directives."
If President Bush truly believed that the expiration of the
Protect America Act caused a danger, he would not have refused our offer of an
extension.
In the remote possibility that a terrorist organization that
we have never previously identified emerges, the National Security Agency could
use existing authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
to track its communications. Since Congress passed FISA in 1978, the court
governing the law's use has approved nearly 23,000 warrant applications and
rejected only five. In an emergency, the NSA or FBI can begin surveillance
immediately and a FISA court order does not have to be obtained for three days.
When
Those who say that FISA is outdated do not appreciate the
strength of this powerful tool.
So what's behind the president's "sky is falling"
rhetoric?
It is clear that he and his Republican allies, desperate to
distract attention from the economy and other policy failures, are trying to
use this issue to scare the American people into believing that congressional
Democrats have left
But if our nation were to suddenly become vulnerable, it
would not be because we don't have sufficient domestic surveillance powers. It
would be because the Bush administration has done too little to defeat
al-Qaeda, which has reconstituted itself in
The president may try to change the topic by talking about
surveillance laws, but we aren't buying it.
We are motivated to pass legislation governing surveillance
because we believe this activity must be carefully regulated to protect Americans'
constitutional rights. Companies that provide lawful assistance to the
government in surveillance activities should be legally protected for doing so.
We are already working to reconcile the House and Senate
bills and hope that our Republican colleagues will join us in the coming weeks
to craft final, bipartisan legislation. A key objective of our effort is to
build support for a law that gives our intelligence professionals not only the
tools they need but also confidence that the legislation they will be
implementing has the broad support of Congress and the American public.
If the president thinks he can use this as a wedge issue to
divide Democrats, he is wrong. We are united in our determination to produce
responsible legislation that will protect
Jay Rockefeller, Patrick Leahy, Silvestre Reyes and John Conyers are chairmen, respectively, of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Judiciary Committee.