Senate Passes Bush-Backed Eavesdropping Spy Boost Bill
In the end, President George Bush played a high-stakes card game with the Democratic controlled Senate, went on the offensive on TV and got just what he wanted:
The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government’s terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.
The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.
Although Democratic leaders expressed disappointment that it had passed, the bottom line was that the vote passed via a coalition of 16 Democrats and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman joining all 43 Republicans to pass the measure. Lieberman said:
“We’re at war. The enemy wants to attack us,” Lieberman said during the Senate debate. “This is not the time to strive for legislative perfection.
The White House was pleased — but some others weren’t:
Privacy advocates accused the Democrats of selling out and charged that this bill gives the government more authority than it had under a controversial warrantless wiretapping program begun in secret after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Under that program, the government could conduct surveillance without judicial oversight only if it had a reason to believe that one party to the call was a member of or affiliated with al-Qaeda or a related terrorist organization. This bill drops that condition, they noted.
Democrats “have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word ‘terrorism,’ they roll over and play dead,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, predicted that the bill’s approval would lead to the monitoring of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency, which conducts most of the government’s electronic surveillance. “If this bill becomes law, Americans who communicate with a person abroad can count on one thing: The NSA may be listening,” he said.
Meanwhile, if a post in Talking Points Memo Muckraker is true, Bush got exactly what he wanted from the Senate after nixing a deal between the House’s Democratic leadership and his own intelligence bigwig. He then coupled that with a dramatic, almost angry demand on TV that Democrats pass an intelligence bill:
Today, while standing with Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, President Bush lamented the inability of Congressional Democrats to give McConnell the tools he needed to capture the communications of terrorists….
There’s only one problem with Bush’s statement: it isn’t true.
A key Democrat in the negotiations, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), says that a deal had in fact been reached with McConnell, who has been busy lobbying Congress on a FISA update all week. “We had an agreement with DNI McConnell,” Hoyer spokeswoman Stacey Bernards tells TPMmuckraker, “and then the White House quashed the agreement.”
The debate will continue (and is) about whether during this era of a genuine terrorist threat it is wise and common sense to give the government all the tools it says it wants. The authority is “temporary.”
But the problem is that the Bush administration has not just shown that it skirts oversight on intelligence but it won’t reveal even to Congress what it is really doing. Its motif has been to use Congressional approvals to increasingly expand its power. This isn’t a case of a White House working in partnership with Congress but a White House that shows disdain for Congress, checks and balances, and serious oversight of its policies and actions.
From a strictly political standpoint, if the TPM piece is indeed true, Bush held out for the strongest deal he could get, went on TV and seemingly scared some Democrats to go along with him (some other Democrats clearly agreed the law update was needed) since his TV talk centered on how critical it was to give government these new updated tools to protect the U.S. And it worked — indicating a) he still has a lot of clout since he can peel off wavering or sympathetic Democrats so they join in coalition with GOPers and b) if it worked this time chances are this tactic will be used on other high-stakes measures.
Likely outcome: it’s going to further hurt the Democratic leadership with its base since it will be seen to be the equivalent of former Majority Leader Bill Frist, who seemed powerless and outmaneuvered on key votes.
Reaction from administration critics on the web, Democrats and some Republicans who are uneasy over giving this administration any new powers is likely to be swift.
The always independent-minded The Talking Dog, for instance, writes:
Ah, don’t we all remember August, 2002? We were all getting ready for that manly celebration of September 11th +1.0, when the President could tell us how manly he handled the whole thing because he showed up a week later with a bullhorn, kind of like how he did back at dear old Yale and Andover with the boy-cheerleader teams. Andy Card told us we didn’t roll out new products in August. And I concluded that a war in Iraq was being played for domestic political purposes, to wit, to corner Democrats into a no win situation of either supporting an unjustified war or being painted as “soft on terrorism” (as if they wouldn’t be anyway), and decided once and for all that I was opposed to the Iraq war for good.
Its 2007, now, and Democrats are in control of both houses of Congress (really?), Iraq has gone to hell in a hand-basket (and will keep going further and further to hell), the President’s ideological and heavy-handed tactics have been widely discredited, the Attorney General blatantly lies to Congress and no one takes any action to stop him, the President’s approval rating hovers in the 20′s… and yet.
Further down TTD writes:
Hackneyed and overplayed as it is, I guess the guy whose office happens to be a block from the World Trade Center site, as it was on September 11, 2001 (that would be me) is once again reduced to stunned speechlessness, and quoting Ben Franklin: “They who would give up their precious liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.” And if George W. Bush is in charge, we will likely end up with neither anyway.
And after over 6 1/2 years of disastrous administration of our government by George W. Bush, Democratic members of Congress seem incapable of figuring this out. Remarkable. A long– a very long– 534 days to go.
Read the entire post.
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21 Responses to “Senate Passes Bush-Backed Eavesdropping Spy Boost Bill”
I just don’t get it. Why are the Dems doing the poodle for Bush? Wouldn’t it have been good enough a response to his demand if Reid would have declared that the current provisions are more than adequate to effectively combat terrorism and that there is no urgent need for giving the administration even more opportunities to spy on its citizen? Especially regarding the lack of accountabilty that has been shown in the last years?
Those dem wimps will never learn.
:-[
[I recycled my comment from A-Blog here. Hope you don't mind]
Btw, good story, Joe, especially that Ben Franklin quote by that TTD guy. He is oh so right. Really, what has become of “the land of the free, the home of the brave”? It’s a freeking nightmare…
|-(
Gray…I would trump The Talking Dog’s quote with a line – sometimes attributed to Lincoln, but which certainly embodies the spirit of Lincoln’s policy: “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”
Lincoln, contra Franklin, recognized that the real world has many shades of gray and adherence to absolute moral principles can be suicidal.
In Lincoln’s case, Confederate agents in the North were using habeas corpus and their Constitutional rights to regularly get out of jail – when their wasn’t enough evidence to hold them more than suspicion – and blow up trains, bridges etc. In some northern states these agents effectively shut down the draft.
Lincoln was, of course, swatted down by an outraged Supreme Court – after Lincoln’s death and the end of the war when the threat had passed.
Of course, liberals such as yourself and Talking Dog would back the rights of such people to the hilt…regardless of consequences to the Republic.
The rights of AQ agents to talk to each other, where their conversations happen to cross American territory, must be absolutely unfettered else it risks the government accidentally listening into Aunt Alice sharing a baking recipe with Granny.
Yah, Lynne Stewart would fully agree.
What’s frustrating is that the problem with the bill, as far as I can tell, is one stinking word. The bill specifies that the AG’s search can proceed so long as the AG has certified that both parties are out of the country and that the FISA judge doesn’t think the AG’s determination is “frivolous”.
Change that one word to “unreasonable” or “unsupported by facts” or something along those lines, and it’s not a terrible solution to what seems to be a bona fide problem, IMHO. (and I’m one of those frothing of the mouthers on civil liberties).
Woah, strike that. Per Lederman’s analysis at Balkin, the bill essentially guts FISA altogether. That’s the problem with trying to skim new legislation: so often the radical departures are just in a phrase or even a word, and I swung and missed.
Well, now I understand why so many reasonable people are disturbed by this bill.
Mark my words: in 5 years or less, conservatives will be accusing President Clinton of using the amended FISA to wiretap GOP communications when GOP leaders are on overseas junkets.
What I find interesting is the willingness to discard our civil liberties and the right of habeus corpus on the grounds that “Lincoln did it”, but when cops tell us their colleagues are getting killed by semi-automatic weapons and want some limits placed on gun ownership, well, that’s a different story. Second amendment rights are not viewed in shades of gray but as an absolute. Sorry, can’t have it both ways. The Constitution exists to preserve our rights despite the circumstances.
I am very disappointed in the Democrats for caving in to the WH once again. All I can think of is they’re worried about the mounting intelligence of a plan for a big attack, and don’t want to leave the capital with that prospect hanging over them. Also, cravenly, they don’t want to hand the Republicans a weapon to bash them with on national security in ’08, and so are playing it safe.
What’s most disturbing about all this is that, between Bush and the terrorists, we have all been drawn into good-or-bad, us-and-them thinking about every important issue. In a sane society, we would be having a serious debate about the tension between public safety and individual privacy. In all this bleating about winning or losing, we’re all being drawn into Bush’s paranoid stupidity:
http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-bush-making-absolutists-of-us-all.html
Even putting aside the Franklin v Lincoln Quote Celebrity Death Match, this bill could have accomplished its security goals without giving away as much freedom/privacy as it did. Bush insisted on 120 days before a court looks at the whole thing, but there’s no evidence I’ve seen that so much is truly warranted. Something like 30 days or 15 days would have been much better. The courts also only get to review the entire program, not individual cases. A lot of really bad governmental invasion is going to be hidden in there. The bill gives away too much and both parties should be embarassed.
The only positive thing I see in here is some apparent belief in the executive branch that the law is relevant for their actions here, which is a departure from before.
The only hopeful sign I see is that the bill comes up for review in 6 months. I hope those disgusted with the spinelessness of the Demorrats spemd time during those 6 months voicing their opinions where it count – in Washington.
Write. Call. Write again.
I mostly agree with Robert Stein. The problem of terrorism hasn’t gone away. It has to be dealt with sensibly.
This bill passed the Senate with a fair number of Democratic votes. Normally, that would mean it had bipartisan support.
But these ain’t normal times.
Our media could report this as a bill with bipartisan support. Or it could be portrayed as a defeat for the Democrats. In fact, it could be portrayed as a victory for the President in spite of his unpopularity. And if our media portrays this as just political maneuvering, they don’t have to report on the underlying substance.
Komrad Marlow – The Civil War was a real war on our own turf, the GWOT is a slogan and their isn’t swarms of “brown people” doing mischief on our shores. While Lincoln’s action wwere necessary, “boot terrorists” and “cutting torch gangs” don’t warrant the paranoia. I don’t recall hereing of Hezbelloh in Dearborn Michigan, just two Iraqis with grudges. Do you want a police state like USSR for an exaggerated threat?
Do you want a police state like USSR for an exaggerated threat?
This goes to the very heart of the matter.
Does anyone seriously believe that spying on suspected terrorists who are receiving calls from overseas is going to create a police state?
The left screams that the right is ruling by FEAR.
The left is doing the same thing. AKA….do it GWB’s way and we will become a USSR police state run by Facist Nazis.
Who has the corner on fear mongering in the USA? I propose that both sides of this debate do. The truth and sanity belongs in the middle.
somebody – Please list the SERIOUS terror cells that we arrested in the US. The UK and Spain attacks are serious, we have NJ, Miami, Boston and NY cutting torch are these serious threats? On 9-11 a FISA judge was making calls to OK procedures from his car in Washington. Bush and Cheney took the “unitary executive” to far. The House bill failed, lets see what the House does with this Senate bill.
Rudi
Its not my right, responsibility or priveledge to know who they are spying on. If I did then it would not be much of a spy job would it.
I’m sure they have gleaned much information that will NEVER BE KNOWN. Informing Rudi would breach, compromise and ruin any value the secret wiretaps had now would’nt it?
Comeon. Get real. They don’t give a flying flip who your drug dealer is. (Hypothetical YOU) They want to prevent, disorganize, bamboozle, disrupt and generally make things very, very hard for the Terrorists to operate in the USA.
So if your receiving calls from pakistan by suspected terrorists then you should be shaking in your boots. If your receiving calls from aunt Matilda in Germany then I suspect you don’t have much to worry about.
The President and all 535 members of Congress swore an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution. Arguing that the Constitution “is not a suicide pact” is just an excuse to ignore the Constitution when its convenient to do so.
somebody – You ignored the “exaggerated” threat. Yesterday in NYC an artist floated around in a wooden+fiberglass diving bell. The “airheads” on cable conflated this with terror. When the bridge went down in Minnesota, the “terror” word was flying all over cable and the blogosphere before the dust settled. Europe had serious attacks, ours go to WalMart to process a DVD. Even McCarthy was right like a broken clock in the 1950′s. The Democrats working with the DNI tried to comprimise, Bush wouldn’t have anything to do with that bill. Please explain our “imminent danger of mushroom clouds” or is paper mache diving bells the real danger?
Please consider this. We are not facing an unprecedented threat. Not by a long shot. During the Cold War, hundreds of nuclear warheads were pointed at us, not a shoe bomb or hair-brained scheme to carry chromic acid on the plane in a shampoo bottle. These missiles could have poisoned the entire planet. If ever we needed top notch intelligence, if ever there was a threat worth sacrificing liberties for (there isn’t) that would have been it. We survived that, we built a super secret intelligence capability and implemented lots of listening and spying. Now we know that every bit of what we did was being sold to the Soviets, every day. We had ZERO secrets, because highly-placed traitors in both the CIA and FBI sold those secrets for money. The illusion that we can spy our way to safety is fully and completely false.
We either value privacy or we don’t. And we either respect due process or we don’t.
Apparently, we do not.
“Comeon. Get real. They don’t give a flying flip who your drug dealer is.”
Somebodoies got to wake up here and get real. He doesn’t have a fucking cle what the spystewrs are doin with all those informations. Didn’t you learn something from the awful example of J. Edgar Hoover? Keep your intelligence agencies on the short line, or else they’ll misuse their power.
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