The House of Representatives defied the White House yesterday by refusing to make an expiring surveillance law permanent, prompting a harsh exchange between Republicans and Democrats as they prepared for an extended, election-year battle over national security.
The episode was a rare uprising by Democrats against the White House on a terrorism issue, and it inspired caterwauling on both sides about the dire ramifications of the standoff.
Republicans said Democrats were putting the nation at risk, while President Bush offered to delay his scheduled departure for Africa today to reach a deal. Democrats responded with charges of administration recklessness and fearmongering.
The conflict erupted on the same day that House Democrats approved contempt citations against White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers over their refusal to cooperate with an investigation into the mass firings of U.S. attorneys.
That vote -- resulting in the first citations ever issued against White House officials -- infuriated the Bush administration and helped torpedo a short-lived political truce with Democrats, who had celebrated the signing of a bipartisan economic stimulus package on Wednesday. Republicans staged a walkout before the vote.
The surveillance dispute centers on the Protect America Act, a temporary law approved over Democratic misgivings last August. It expanded the powers of the government to monitor the communications of foreign suspects without warrants, including international phone calls and e-mails passing through or into the United States. It is set to expire at the end of the day tomorrow.
The Bush administration wants to make the law permanent, while adding legal immunity for telecommunication companies that were sued for invasions of privacy after helping U.S. intelligence agencies conduct warrantless wiretapping. The Senate has approved a bill backed by the White House, but the House has balked at the immunity provision and raised other objections because of civil-liberties concerns.
Without the law, administration officials said yesterday in interviews and statements, the monitoring of terrorist groups overseas will be severely hampered. Telecom firms may also become reluctant to help the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies conduct surveillance, officials said.
"If Congress does not act by that time, our ability to find out who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning will be compromised," Bush said in a hastily arranged news appearance on the South Lawn of the White House. He said that intelligence officials were "waiting to see" if Congress would "tie their hands."
Democrats immediately said that the expiration of the temporary law would have little, if any, immediate impact on intelligence gathering. "He has nothing to offer but fear," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters after Bush's address.
The thing is, the White House's hands are NOT tied under FISA when it comes to monitoring the communications of terrorists. IFSA explicitly allows obtaining warrants after the fact; the only restriction is that the government has to restrict its monitoring activities to legitimate terrorist suspects, not every communication of every person in America.
As for the immunity for the telecommunications industry, that's less about any deep-seated alliance between the Bush Administration and the telecom corporations than it is about thwarting any inquiry into the exact nature of the demands made on said companies -- especially when we now know that the Bush Administration's surveillance activities preceded the 9/11/01 attacks.
George W. Bush's fearmongering, which resemble a child saying he's going to hold his breath till his face turns blue, seems to indicate, with his remarks that terrorists are planning attacks that will make the 9/11 attacks "pale by comparison", that he is fully prepared to allow such attacks to take place if he doesn't get his way. We already know that this Administration is willing to ignore warnings of impending attacks because allowing them to play out provides the political cover they need for their most heinous acts, including the invasion of Iraq. They've done it once, there's no reason to believe they won't do it again -- especially when the potential for a changeover of power in executive branch to the Democratic party, and the expansion of Democratic gains in the House and Senate, seems likely.
Ultimately it matters not one whit whether the Bush Administration is allowed to scoop up all communications activities of all Americans in the name of "fighting terror." Because it's not about fighting terror, it's about keeping Republican power. And they can monitor all the communications they want -- if they see political advantage in allowing an attack to play out, they'll do exactly that.
But that doesn't mean Congress needs to be complicit.
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