Senate Chairman Splits With Bush on Spy
Program
NY Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: February 18, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 — The chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee said Friday that he wanted the Bush administration's domestic
eavesdropping program brought under the authority of a special intelligence
court, a move President Bush has argued is not necessary.
The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he had some
concerns that the court could not issue warrants quickly enough to keep up with
the needs of the eavesdropping program. But he said he would like to see those
details worked out.
Mr. Roberts also said he did not believe that exempting the program from the
purview of the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
"would be met with much support" on Capitol Hill. Yet that is exactly the
approach the Bush administration is pursuing.
"I think it should come before the FISA court, but I don't know how it
works," Mr. Roberts said. "You don't want to have a situation where you have
capability that doesn't work well with the FISA court, in terms of speed and
agility and hot pursuit. So we have to solve that problem."
Mr. Roberts spoke in an interview a day after announcing that the White
House, in a turnabout, had agreed to open discussions about changing
surveillance law. By Friday, with Mr. Roberts apparently stung by accusations
that he had caved to White House pressure not to investigate the eavesdropping
without warrants, it appeared the talks could put the White House and Congress
on a collision course.
White House officials favor a proposal offered by another Republican
senator, Mike DeWine of Ohio, whose bill would exempt the eavesdropping from
the intelligence court. Mr. DeWine wants small subcommittees to oversee the
wiretapping, but Mr. Roberts said he would like the full House and Senate
Intelligence Committees to have regular briefings.
"I think it's the function and the oversight responsibility of the
committee," he said, adding, "That might sound strange coming from me."
Mr. Roberts's comments were surprising because he has been a staunch
defender of the program and an ally of White House efforts to resist a
full-scale Senate investigation. On Thursday, he pushed back a committee vote
on a Democratic push to conduct an inquiry, saying he wanted to give the White
House time to negotiate on possible legislation. On Friday, he dismissed
accusations that he had bowed to pressure.
"The irony of this is that it is portrayed now as administration pressure
brought to bear on us, meaning the Republicans on the committee and basically
me," Mr. Roberts said Friday. "It's just the reverse. It's the Republicans on
the committee, my staff and myself, who have been really — I don't want
to say pressuring, but trying to come up with a reasonable compromise that will
settle this issue. It was our activity that brought them along to this point,
plus the possibility of an investigation."
The eavesdropping, authorized in secret by President Bush soon after the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has allowed the National Security Agency to monitor
the international telephone and e-mail communications of hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of people within the United States — without warrants —
when the authorities suspect they have links to terrorists.
Democrats and a growing number of Republicans say the program appears to
violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Some Republicans are
also skeptical of the Bush administration's assertion that it has the inherent
constitutional authority to conduct the eavesdropping, and that Congress
authorized the program when it passed a resolution after Sept. 11 giving Mr.
Bush authority to use military force to defend the nation.
In the House, Republicans on the Intelligence Committee have agreed to open
an inquiry prompted by the surveillance program and are debating how broad it
should be. Mr. Roberts said he had not spoken to Representative Peter Hoekstra,
the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,
about what the House panel is doing.
Representative Heather A. Wilson, Republican of New Mexico and
chairwoman of the House Intelligence subcommittee that oversees the National
Security Agency, has pressed for a broad investigation, but Mr. Hoekstra's
aides have said that any inquiry would be limited to an examination of the FISA
law.
The Senate intelligence chairman, Mr. Roberts, said he believed the
administration had the constitutional authority for the program, but added, "We
would be much more in concert with the Congress and everybody else and the FISA
court judges" if the court oversaw the program.
As panel chairman, Mr. Roberts holds great sway. An aide to the senator said
he had some specific ideas that he had been privately discussing with committee
members and other lawmakers. But neither the senator nor the aide, who spoke on
condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the negotiations,
would make those ideas public.
Nor will Mr. Roberts have final say over what form legislation will take;
rather, his ideas are circulating in an environment that one Congressional
aide, referring to the Winter Olympic Games, said was "sort of like
snowboardcross, with four proposals shooting out of the gate, jockeying for
position."
Another senior Senate Republican, Arlen Specter, the chairman of the
Judiciary Committee, has proposed legislation that would allow the FISA court
to pass judgment on the program's constitutionality. And Senator Olympia J.
Snowe, Republican of Maine and a member of the intelligence panel, said Friday
that she believed the eavesdropping must come under the purview of the
judiciary.
"I think we do have to have judicial review," she said, adding, "Whether
it's the FISA approach or not I think remains in question, but it can't go on
in perpetuity, and it can't be unfettered warrantless surveillance."
Whether Republicans can agree remains to be seen. "People are all over the
place," Mr. DeWine said. "We don't have a consensus."
The White House has been in talks with Mr. DeWine, who said Harriet E.
Miers, the White House counsel, called him on Wednesday night, on the eve of
the Senate Intelligence panel's scheduled vote, to discuss his legislation.
"What we have talked about with some Congressional leaders is codifying into
law what his authority already is," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman
said in an interview Friday, referring to the president. He added, "Senator
DeWine has some good ideas, and we think they're reasonable ideas."
Since the program's inception, the White House has provided information
about it to members of the "Gang of Eight," the Democratic and Republican
leaders of the House and Senate, and the senior Democrat and Republican on the
intelligence panels in both chambers. Last week, the Bush administration went
further, revealing details of the program to all members of the House and
Senate intelligence panels.
Mr. DeWine said his proposal called for an intelligence subcommittee with
"professional staff" to have oversight. "It would be fundamentally different
than doing it by the Gang of Eight, where there's really no staff," he said,
adding, "The key is oversight."
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