From: Andrew Johnson
Date: 2005-12-17 13:22:51
www.gdd.net/bkholida… December 17, 2005 Senators Thwart Bush Bid to Renew Law on Terrorism By SHERYL GAY STOLBERGand ERIC LICHTBLAU WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 – The Senate on Friday blocked reauthorization of the broad antiterrorism bill known as the USA Patriot Act, pushing Congress into a game of brinksmanship with President Bush, who has said the nation will be left vulnerable to attack if the measure is not quickly renewed. With many Democrats and some Republicans saying the bill does not go far enough in protecting civil liberties, the Republican leadership fell short of the 60 votes required to break a filibuster. Now the future of the law, which greatly expanded the government’s surveillance and investigative powers in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is in doubt. The debate, a passionate fight about the balance between national security and personal privacy, became a touchstone for repercussions after the disclosure on Thursday night that Mr. Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for terrorist activity. On Friday afternoon, after the report in The New York Times and the fallout it engendered, Vice President Dick Cheney made a hurried trip to the Capitol to defend the domestic spying program against charges that it might be illegal, while Mr. Bush said he “would do everything in my power to protect the country, within the law,” from another terrorist attack. Disclosure of the eavesdropping prompted immediate calls from some lawmakers for an end to the program and for Congressional and possible criminal investigations into its operations. One senator, Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the new information had prompted him to support the filibuster against extending the antiterrorism law. “I went to bed undecided,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor, “but today’s revelation that the government has listened in on thousands of phone conversations is shocking and has greatly influenced my vote.” Opponents of the extension say they are concerned that the law would allow the government too much latitude in obtaining personal information, like library and medical records and business transactions, and in conducting secret searches. The vote, 52 to 47, with four Republicans joining all but two Democrats to back the filibuster, capped a particularly trying week for Mr. Bush. He has been buffeted by criticism, including from within his own party, over his policies on terrorism, the war in Iraq and the detention and treatment of military prisoners. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed on a measure to require the director of national intelligence to provide regular, detailed updates about secret detention sites maintained by the United States overseas. On Thursday, after weeks of resisting Senator John McCain’s effort to pass a measure banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in American custody, Mr. Bush reversed course and embraced the plan. The proposed renewal of the antiterrorism law had already been teetering under the weight of increased concerns about civil liberties. Sixteen major provisions are set to expire at the end of December, and Congress hopes to adjourn in a few days. The bill’s opponents had pushed for a three-month extension of the law to allow for more negotiations, but the White House and Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, rebuffed their request. “The terrorists want to attack America again and kill the innocent and inflict even greater damage than they did on Sept. 11 – and the Congress has a responsibility not to take away this vital tool that law enforcement and intelligence officials have used to protect the American people,” Mr. Bush said in a statement after the vote against ending debate. “The senators who are filibustering the Patriot Act must stop their delaying tactics so that we are not without this critical law for even a single moment.” Some Republicans as well as Democrats voiced concern about the disclosure that Mr. Bush had authorized the eavesdropping, without warrants, on the international phone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people within the United States, despite longstanding legal and policy restrictions on such domestic wiretaps. A government official said Mr. Bush took a hands-on role in the oversight of the program, reviewing it every 45 to 60 days and renewing the original executive order more than three dozen times. The official said that close oversight reflected a determination by the White House to monitor the program closely. Officials spoke about the program on condition of anonymity because it was classified. A series of legal opinions within the Bush administration have supported the president’s authority to conduct such warrantless searches, citing the authority that Congress gave him after the Sept. 11 attacks to deter Al Qaeda, officials involved in the operation said. But concerns about the program’s use and the complexities of the legal rationale behind it prompted the administration to suspend it for a time in 2004 and impose new restrictions to better safeguard against abuse of civil liberties, the officials said. Officials who were briefed on Mr. Cheney’s closed-door meetings with House and Senate leaders on Friday declined to discuss them in detail because they took place in a classified setting. But they said Mr. Cheney, whose office helped lead the creation of the eavesdropping program, offered a vigorous defense of its legality and usefulness. The lawmakers Mr. Cheney met with, Democrats and Republicans, had been briefed on the program previously, and the vice president focused less on explaining the program than on discussing the impact of the disclosure, one official said. Mr. Bush was asked about the program on the PBS program “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” but he would not confirm its existence. “We do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country,” he said. “And the reason why is that there’s an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we’re trying to do to stop them.” But Mr. Bush added: “I will make this point. That whatever I do to protect the American people, and I have an obligation to do so, that we will uphold the law, and decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people.” “I told the American people I would do everything in my power to protect the country, within the law, and that’s exactly how I conduct my presidency,” he said. The president suggested that the disclosure was not as big an issue as the news media and policy makers were making it out to be. “It’s not the main story of the day,” Mr. Bush said. “The main story of the day is the Iraqi election.” But leading members of Congress from both parties made clear that they considered the eavesdropping program to be a major issue, raising what they described as troubling questions about the president’s use of his authority to combat terrorism. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who leads the Judiciary Committee, promised full oversight hearings into the program, saying, “There is no doubt that this is inappropriate.” Mr. Specter said the hearings would “take precedence over every other item that that committee has scheduled,” except for the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, and he added that he intended to call N.S.A. officials and the attorney general as witnesses. Mr. Specter and other lawmakers from both parties questioned the legality of Mr. Bush’s executive order. “The law prohibits this type of electronic surveillance,” Mr. Specter said, “and there are a lot of basic questions that need to be answered about how this program was authorized and used.” “I want to know precisely what they did,” he said. “How N.S.A. utilized their technical equipment; whose conversations they overheard; how many conversations they overheard; what they did with the material; what purported justification there was – and I use the word ‘purported’ to emphasize – and we will go from there.” Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, denounced the program as “Big Brother run amok,” while Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said the disclosure “ought to send a chill down the spine of every American and every senator.” “You want to talk about abuses?” Mr. Feingold asked. “I can’t imagine a more shocking example of an abuse of power, to eavesdrop on American citizens without first getting a court order based on some evidence that they are possibly criminals, terrorists or spies.” Some lawmakers called for an immediate end to the program. Among them was Senator Chuck Hagel, a moderate Republican from Nebraska who sits on the Intelligence Committee and voted to block extension of the antiterrorism law. “This is a very serious issue, a very serious story,” Mr. Hagel told reporters. “If, in fact, this is true, then it needs to stop. It’s very clear in the law that the National Security Agency is prohibited from domestic spying, from spying on citizens of the United States unless there are extenuating circumstances. But we need some answers to this.” Mr. Specter said the report had been “very, very problemsome, if not devastating,” to his effort to reauthorize the antiterrorism law. But opponents of the extension said that, with support building for the filibuster all week, the outcome would probably have been the same. “This was the will of the Senate,” said Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, who led the opposition among Republicans. The two Democrats who broke ranks to oppose the filibuster were Senators Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Ever since the adoption of the antiterrorism law, critics have said it failed to strike the proper balance between protecting national security and personal privacy. The measure that was blocked in the Senate on Friday was the product of intense negotiations with the House, which passed it earlier this week. It would make 14 of the 16 major provisions permanent and would extend three others for four years. It would also add new safeguards, including some provisions for judicial oversight. But Mr. Sununu and other opponents, including Senators Larry E. Craig of Idaho and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both Republicans, said those safeguards did not go far enough. It is now up to the White House and Mr. Frist to decide whether to negotiate or let the 16 provisions lapse. Publicly, Mr. Frist insisted he would do neither. He took the tactical step on Friday of switching his vote at the last minute to side with the backers of the filibuster, a maneuver that allows him to bring the measure up for consideration again. After the vote, he said he would do so. In holding fast, Mr. Frist and other Republicans may be calculating that Democrats would suffer at the polls for rejecting extension of the antiterrorism law, just as, the Republicans argued, they suffered in 2002 for defeating legislation to create the Department of Homeland Security. But the chief Democratic opponent of the antiterrorism law, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, said the votes would not change. James Risen contributed reporting for this article.
