Senator Mitch McConnell appeared on several talk radio shows to discuss the response to Hurricane Gustav and the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Senator McConnell with Tony Cruise

Senator McConnell with Jack Pattie

Last August, under the pressure of a looming vacation deadline, lawmakers passed what President Bush described as an urgent fix to the country's ability to secretly eavesdrop on suspected terrorists overseas. Many in Congress, particularly Democrats, feared the barrage of blame if they did nothing about the electronic surveillance law and terrorists attacked while lawmakers were working on their tans.

 

So they passed a temporary extension that expired in February, with the intention of permanently fixing the law before then.

 

Dream on.

 

In the intervening months, the Senate overwhelmingly passed an excellent bill to modernize the eavesdropping law. The president has urged Congress to send him that bill. But the House has balked. It passed its own version earlier this month. A major sticking point between the two: retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that helped the government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

 

The Senate bill grants the immunity; the House bill doesn't. The Senate's rationale: These companies were following patriotic impulses when they responded to pleas from the federal government. The House: The companies need to answer for any possible wrongdoing and they can't just blindly follow administration requests.

 

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Still, [House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer] added: "I see no malice in the acts of the phone companies. They had nothing to gain. They had no profit to receive. They weren't going to get any kudos from anybody for doing this."

 

Our point—and the Senate's—exactly. Whatever the companies did, they did because they were asked.

 

All the haggling over the new law won't immediately interrupt already approved wiretapping cases against terror targets. But the longer it continues, the greater potential for disrupting America's ability to spy on terrorists.

 

In a separate visit to the Tribune editorial board, FBI Director Robert Mueller recently warned of a prolonged congressional fight over a new surveillance law. "With no bill out there, there is uncertainty. There is concern with the communication carriers as to the extent to which and circumstances under which they can help us. And any uncertainty and concern are disincentives to cooperate with us. Any delay can be harmful."

 

So let's not delay anymore. Pass a law, with immunity. In a time of crisis, these companies stepped up to cooperate. They did what their government asked. Don't open them to liability for that.

After a brief period last week when it appeared that the House Democratic leadership might be preparing to end their obstructionism regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), it's business as usual for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Today, the House is expected to consider a FISA bill crafted by senior Democrats that does not give retroactive liability protection to telecommunications companies that helped monitor the electronic communications of terrorists after September 11. Last month, the Senate voted 68-29 in favor of legislation including such protections, with 19 Democrats voted with the majority. In the House, 21 members of the Blue Dog Coalition signed a letter to Mrs. Pelosi urging passage of the bipartisan Senate bill. Mrs. Pelosi responded by sending the House on a vacation without considering the Senate bill.
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Tomorrow, the speaker plans to send the House on another vacation — this one for two weeks. Her motto seems to be: It ain't over until the terrorists and trial lawyers win.

23 days ago the House leadership allowed critical national security legislation to expire.  For more than three weeks now, our intelligence community has been hampered in its efforts to spy on terrorists operating overseas while it waits on Congress to pass the Protect America Act.

Before the legislation expired Sen. McConnell led a bi-partisan group of U.S. Senators in passing the Protect America Act.  A bi-partisan majority of the U.S. House has expressed its desire to join the Senate and pass the bill, but House leaders have so far refused to even allow a vote. 

The San Antonio Express-News is the latest newspaper to call on the House to join Sen. McConnell and the Senate in approving the Protect America Act.

In an editorial, the Paducah Sun calls on the U.S. House to follow the lead of the Senate and pass the Protect America Act. (Emphasis added)

Attorney General Michael Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, in a letter to Congress last month, wrote: "Private citizens who respond in good faith to a request for assistance by public officials should not be liable for

their actions."

 

One might ask why, if telecommunications companies know they've done nothing wrong, they need protection from liability. That's an easy one; the telecoms are already facing about 40 violation-of-privacy lawsuits from customers seeking billions in damages for their role in the federal government's surveillance activities.

 

Setting aside the irony of citizens who are worried about protecting their privacy filing what are certain to become high-profile lawsuits, it is only logical to hold private citizens -- and private companies -- harmless for cooperating with law enforcement agencies at any level.

 

The president wants to make the temporary Protect America Act permanent and include retroactive immunity for the telecoms that aided federal investigators eavesdropping on suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. The permanent act would replace the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that regulates wiretapping.

 

The Senate approved a bill with the retroactive immunity, but the House did not, allowing the temporary bill to expire.

 

The president said failing to act on the bill ties the hands of intelligence agencies and leaves the country more vulnerable to an attack. "The law expired," he said. "The threat to America didn't expire."

 

Bush said he would veto any bill without the liability immunity. If the lawsuits are permitted to proceed, he said, it would expose investigators' methods and "would give al Qaida and others a road map as to how to avoid surveillance."

 

The wiretapping was probably instrumental in foiling terror plots and capturing would-be terrorists, although the agencies that uncovered the plots don't, for obvious reasons, reveal their methods. The fact that the United States has not suffered another terror attack on our shores since 2001, despite numerous attempts, confirms the success of U.S. intelligence efforts.

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The House should follow the Senate's lead and approve a new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with retroactive liability immunity for the telecoms.

This column from Sen. Mitch McConnell appeared yesterday in the Investor's Business Daily. You can read the column on their website here.

In the wake of 9/11, Americans were stunned to learn that our own intelligence officials had information on some of the hijackers even before the attacks.

Three years later, Congress created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to prevent similar gaps in intelligence gathering. Its nonpartisan director oversees 16 agencies and advises the president and Congress on how best to detect terrorist plots.

But now, when it comes to intercepting the communications of terrorists overseas, the Democrats' leadership in the House of Representatives has decided that his advice is optional.

The consequences of inaction are real: Last Saturday, the director of national intelligence, Adm. Mike McConnell, warned Congress that we have already lost intelligence information and that "our ability to gather information concerning the intentions and planning of terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets will continue to degrade because we have lost tools provided by the Protect America Act that enable us to adjust to changing circumstances."

Following the lead of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the leaders of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives have prevented a vote on bipartisan improvements to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 — even though a majority in both chambers of Congress had indicated a willingness to support the updates and even though McConnell had been urging Congress to act on the revisions for nearly a year.

Call Back Later?

The House's lack of action meant that at midnight on Feb. 16, the nation's terrorist surveillance law expired. At that moment, intelligence officials who spend their days listening in on phone calls between terrorists overseas were legally barred from following new leads without first following outdated and cumbersome warrant procedures — even if neither caller is calling from within the U.S.

The consequences of inaction are real. Today, if someone in a previously unknown terror cell calls an eager new recruit in London, our agents will have to hang up the phone, apply for a warrant and hope for the best.

If a Marine in Iraq captures a terrorist from a previously unidentified terror group, our agents will not be free to call the phone numbers in his laptop right away.

If calls placed to these numbers are routed through U.S. phone lines, our agents will have to apply for a warrant, even though the people on the other end are overseas and the terrorist with the laptop is not an American.

Hard to believe? Sadly, this is the world we live in now that Congress has failed to act.

The importance of extending our terrorist surveillance program was never in doubt. Every intelligence official in Washington, along with every member of Congress involved in intelligence oversight, agrees that FISA has been vital in protecting us from attacks. The director of national intelligence and others across the intelligence community have credited the law with helping us capture multiple terrorists and disrupting multiple terror cells.

Departed Democrats

Intelligence officials and most members of Congress also agree on the need to fix two major flaws in the original FISA law.

Because the outdated 1978 version did not take technological advances into account, intelligence officials whose phone calls are routed through U.S. phone lines were forced to follow cumbersome "probable cause" warrant processes.

And because the 1978 version did not protect phone companies from lawsuits for patriotically helping the government trace terrorist calls, these companies now face dozens of lawsuits — suits that jeopardize not only the financial future of the phone companies but also our ability to trace terrorist communications.

An overwhelming bipartisan majority, 68 members of the Senate, voted to fix FISA and extend it for six years. Most House members publicly stated that they were wil-ling and eager to do the same thing. This means that a vast majority of Congress was eager to follow the advice of the director of national intelligence, whose job is to look across the intelligence landscape and see our weaknesses before the terrorists do.

Yet the House Democrats ignored a majority in Congress as well as the views of Adm. McConnell, whom Democrats and Republicans tapped three years ago to "connect the dots."

Faced with an urgent warning by the director of national intelligence, House Democrats closed up shop and went home. That decision, according to top intelligence officials, left the U.S. more vulnerable to attack.

Americans have been spared another terrorist attack at home thanks in large part to programs like electronic surveillance. As the House reconvenes this week, it's time for the Democrats' leadership to allow a vote on this vital national security measure.

"It is a bill that protects the country," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican. "It is a bill that will be signed into law."

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The original 1978 FISA law requires the government to obtain a warrant from a special court to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance in the U.S. But changes in telecommunications technology have forced the government to sometimes obtain warrants to spy abroad, because foreign phone calls and other electronic communications now often travel through U.S. networks.

 

The Senate passed the overall FISA bill by a vote of 68-29. No Republicans voted against the bills, while 19 Democrats supported it.

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"In the face of politically motivated pressure from the radical left, the Senate passed a good, bipartisan bill that will help keep America safe by closing the terrorist loophole in our nation's surveillance laws," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican. "After months of stalling, House Democratic leaders should bring it up for a vote immediately."

One week from today, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will expire unless Congress passes a new version that President Bush is willing to sign.  If it expires, our intelligence gatherers here and abroad will be rendered blind and deaf because the legality of their operations will be put in limbo.

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FISA -- which dates back to the Carter administration -- is a law that is supposed to govern how intelligence agencies collect data on foreign agents in the United States.  Though the President has Constitutional authority to do this outside of the framework of FISA, President Bush chose last year to submit the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program to FISA limitations when the existence of the highly classified program was leaked to and published by the New York Times.

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With the expiration date closing in, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) finally began floor action on the FISA bill. But he and the other liberals are trying to wheedle another short-term extension without the telecom immunity the intelligence community wants and needs.  Both McConnells -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and Director of National Intelligence Adm. Mike McConnell -- have rejected the idea. 

... Nothing could be more urgent than protecting this vital national security tool before its expiration on Feb. 1.  Our first duty is to protect Americans from harm, and we know for a fact this law has helped us detect and disrupt terrorist plots.  It would be grossly irresponsible for Congress to weaken it or let it lapse.  And the notion that some in Congress would even consider filibustering this vital anti-terror tool is difficult to comprehend.

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We’ve put this off long enough.  Let’s pass this bill, and protect this vital tool before it expires.