Surveillance Bill Meets Resistance in Senate

SURVEILLANCE BILL MEETS RESISTANCE IN SENATE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Dan Eggen]
A Senate surveillance bill personally negotiated by President Bush and Vice President Cheney ran into immediate trouble this week, as Democrats and other critics attacked the proposal while key GOP leaders in the House endorsed a different bill on the same topic. The Senate legislation, drafted during negotiations between the White House and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), would allow the administration to submit the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program to a secret intelligence court for review of its legality. The proposal was billed as a rare and noteworthy compromise by the administration when unveiled last week. But the legislation quickly came under attack from Democrats and many national security experts, who said it would actually give the government greater powers to spy on Americans without court oversight. A competing bill introduced by Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-NM) was endorsed this week by two key House GOP leaders: Peter Hoekstra (MI), the intelligence committee chairman, and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (WI), head of the Judiciary Committee. Sen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, canceled a markup session for his proposal that had been scheduled for yesterday. He announced instead plans instead for a full committee hearing Wednesday on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the 1978 statute at the center of the debate. The developments add to the uncertainty surrounding the eavesdropping program, which allows the NSA to intercept telephone calls and e-mails between the United States and locations overseas without court approval if one of the parties is suspected of links to terrorism.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072001708.html
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