Republicans Spar on Leaks and Surveillance, Underscoring Partisan Shake-up

House Republicans offered sharply divergent views about secret government surveillance programs and the leaks that made them public, underscoring the unsettled nature of a political debate that has scrambled the usual partisan lines.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) suggested at a hearing that reporters who published articles based on leaked National Security Agency documents may be criminals “fencing stolen material.” At a parallel hearing on surveillance matters related to the leaks by Edward J. Snowden, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte (R-VA) expressed skepticism about the agency program that collects records of all Americans’ phone calls -- and about President Obama’s stated intention to overhaul it. The different approaches reflect a split that has opened in Congress between the judiciary panels, which tend to be centers of libertarian privacy concerns and skepticism about the surveillance programs, and the intelligence committees, which are focused primarily on national security and have defended the NSA.