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Editorial: Caving in on surveillance
Congress folds after Bush team stokes fears
Last Updated 12:04 am PDT Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Story appeared in EDITORIALS section, Page B6
After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush did an end run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which prohibits eavesdropping on Americans without judicial oversight. Instead of going to Congress to change the law, Bush decided to simply monitor without warrants the international phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States.
Six years later, the Bush administration belatedly has gone to Congress. But instead of promoting modernization in the law, the administration has ginned up new fears about terrorist attacks and cowed Congress into passing hasty, ill-considered changes.
The campaign began with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff saying he had a "gut feeling" about a terrorist attack this summer -- though, he added, there was no credible information about any attack in the near term or imminent future. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others chimed in -- always adding that there is "nothing that appears concrete or imminent."
But the message was clear: Give the president the powers he seeks or take responsibility for a new attack. So on Friday, just before Congress left for the August recess, all 43 Senate Republicans, plus 16 Democrats (including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein) passed a sweeping bill on a 60-28 vote. House Republicans, plus 41 Democrats, followed suit Saturday on a 227-183 vote.
This bill allows the government to monitor foreign calls and e-mails with U.S. citizens (so long as one party is out of the country) without warrants or any oversight by Congress or the foreign intelligence surveillance court. It does not require surveillance to have anything to do with al-Qaida or terrorism. The bill essentially retroactively approves Bush's earlier eavesdropping program without warrants -- and adds more unaccountable powers.
Lawmakers try to justify their vote by saying it is only a six-month temporary fix. But they cannot undo the damage they've done in legitimizing Bush's earlier warrantless surveillance program. This remains a Congress in search of a spine.
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