[governance] Senate Deal on Immunity for Phone Companies

[Riaz K. Tayob]

Senate Deal on Immunity for Phone Companies
     By Eric Lichtblau
     The New York Times

     Thursday 18 October 2007

     Washington - Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee reached a 
tentative agreement on Wednesday with the Bush administration that would 
give telephone carriers legal immunity for any role they played in the 
National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program approved by 
President Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Congressional 
official said Wednesday.

     Senators this week began reviewing classified documents related to 
the participation of the telephone carriers in the security agency 
program and came away from that early review convinced that the 
companies had "acted in good faith" in cooperating with what they 
believed was a legal and presidentially authorized program and that they 
should not be punished through civil litigation for their roles, the 
official said.

     As part of legislation on the security agency's wiretapping 
authorities, the White House has been pushing hard for weeks to get 
immunity for the telecommunications companies in discussions with 
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the Democratic chairman 
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Christopher S. Bond of 
Missouri, the ranking Republican. A tentative deal was first reported by 
The Washington Post.

     The Intelligence Committee will begin reviewing the legislation at 
a closed session on Thursday.

     The agreement between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 
Bush administration would also include a greater role for the secret 
intelligence court in overseeing and approving methods of wiretapping 
used by the security agency, the official said.

     But it is not clear whether this and other toughened civil 
liberties safeguards included in the agreement will go far enough to 
mollify senators on the Senator Judiciary Committee, who will also 
review the plan once the intelligence panel finishes its work.

     Word of the deal came hours after House Republicans used a 
parliamentary maneuver to scuttle a vote on a measure that would have 
imposed new restrictions on the security agency's eavesdropping powers.

     At the start of the day, Democrats were confident that the measure 
would gain approval in the House despite a veto threat from President 
Bush. But after an afternoon of partisan sniping, Democratic leaders put 
off that vote because of a competing measure from Republicans that on 
its face asked lawmakers to declare where they stood on stopping Osama 
bin Laden from attacking the United States again.

     The Republican measure declared that nothing in the broader bill 
should be construed as prohibiting intelligence officials from 
conducting the surveillance needed to prevent Mr. bin Laden or Al Qaeda 
"from attacking the United States." Had it passed, it threatened to 
derail the Democratic measure altogether.

     Democrats denounced the Republicans' poison pill on Mr. bin Laden 
as a cynical political ploy and "a cheap shot." But Democratic leaders 
realized that they were at risk of losing the votes of a contingent of 
more moderate Democrats who did not want to be left vulnerable for 
voting against a resolution to stop Al Qaeda, officials said. So the 
leaders pulled the measure, promising to take it up again next week once 
they could solidify support.

     The Republican maneuver "would have killed the bill, and we 
couldn't risk that," said a senior Democratic aide, who spoke on 
condition of anonymity to discuss internal leadership deliberations. "We 
thought we'd be able to defeat it, but it became clear that we couldn't."

     The episode revealed, once again, fault lines within the Democratic 
Party over how to tackle national security questions without appearing 
"soft" on terrorism in the face of Republican criticism.

     Indeed, Republican leaders immediately praised their ability to 
block the N.S.A. measure as a sign of the Democrats' weakness on that 
issue. Representative Heather A. Wilson, Republican of New Mexico, said 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi "underestimated the intelligence of the American 
people and the bipartisan majority in the Congress to understand what 
matters most: preventing another terrorist attack."

     Democrats, clearly thrown on the defensive, countered that 
Republicans were the ones playing politics with national security.

     "Once again, House Republicans have chosen to engage in politics 
rather than substantively address the challenges that face the American 
people," said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House 
Democratic leader. "Once again, they have offered an amendment that, if 
passed, would have substantially delayed this important legislation 
which is designed to protect the American people by proposing language 
already provided in the bill."

     The Democratic measure would have sought to restore some of the 
restrictions on the security agency's wiretapping powers that had been 
loosened under a temporary measure approved by Congress just before its 
August recess. The new bill would give the secret foreign intelligence 
court a greater oversight role in the agency's interception of 
foreign-based communications into the United States, and it would 
provide for more reporting and accountability when the communications of 
Americans were involved.

     The Bush administration has lobbied hard against the measure. One 
of its chief complaints is that the House bill would not provide 
immunity for telephone carriers as the Senate measure does.

     A day after threatening to veto the House measure, Mr. Bush kept up 
the political pressure Wednesday in the hours before the bill was to 
come up for a vote. He said at a news conference that the Democratic 
plan would weaken national security, and he urged Congress instead to 
make permanent the measure it passed in August, which broadened the 
security agency's authority to wiretap terrorism suspects without court 
oversight. That measure expires in February.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101807D.shtml
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