Specter Pushes FISA Markup for Next Week
Despite strong Democratic opposition, Senate Judiciary Committee Chmn. Specter (R-Pa.) plans mark up next week of the electronic surveillance bill (S-2453) so it can get to the Senate floor. “I know there is opposition,” he said: “But frankly I find the arguments hard to understand.” Specter had a hearing Wed. on the bill where top security officials told why they need surveillance reforms the bill proposes (WID July 27 p3).
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Specter expects a party-line vote on the bill, opposed by Ranking Member Leahy (D-Vt.), he said. Specter would be more “comfortable” with the bill if it compelled searches under individual warrants rather than “programmatic” warrants, as stipulated in the compromise he reached with Pres. Bush, he said. Many Democrats oppose the programmatic warrant, a new section of the bill, as too broad and an avenue leading to illegal eavesdropping on ordinary Americans’ conversations.
The bill would authorize “seizing the contents of purely domestic calls of American citizens without probable cause, without specific suspicion and where the call has nothing to do with al Qaeda,” said James Dempsey, policy dir.-Center for Democracy and Technology, in testimony provided to the committee. The bill’s language is so broad that if it becomes law anyone associated with a terror group, such as a relative or journalist, could be swept up in an investigation, he said.
The FISA bill would give the President broad powers, said Sen. Feinstein (D-Cal.). She raised concerns about the bill’s waiver of an “exclusivity” provision, which would let a chief executive choose between using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) or another basis for conducting surveillance. FISA was fitted with the exclusivity provision to check a president’s course of action in the absence of congressional guidance, according to Dempsey’s testimony. Repeal of the exclusivity provision would give a president “inherent” power to conduct surveillance, Dempsey said. “This strikes me as something I cannot do,” Feinstein said. Feinstein also objected to the bill’s programmatic warrant provision, urging Specter to hold out for language requiring individual search warrants in surveillance programs.
“Well, I'll mark you down as a ‘no’ vote,” Specter said. He added that he’s asked National Security Agency (NSA) Dir. Keith Alexander to explain in writing why NSA can’t handle issuance of individual warrants. Specter said the President’s electronic surveillance program would be subject to FISA court review under his deal with the White House. He described the agreement as the “best we're going to get” and “quite a concession” from President Bush. Now it’s time to move forward with the legislation, Specter said.
“I want to focus on this and come to grips with it,” he said: “I don’t think we're going to get anything more” from the White House. Specter scolded critics who've pounded the deal. “Once the President agrees to something, I think there are people out there who just think there has to be something wrong with it,” he said.