Democrats under pressure from Bush vote for measure
By Carl Hulse and Edmund L. Andrews
Under pressure from President Bush, the House on Saturday gave final approval to changes in a terrorist surveillance program despite serious objections from many Democrats about the scope of the executive branch’s new eavesdropping power.
Racing to complete a final rush of legislation before a scheduled monthlong break, the House voted 227-183 to endorse a measure the Bush administration said was needed to keep pace with communications technology in the effort to track terrorists overseas.
The House Democratic leadership had severe reservations about the proposal and an overwhelming majority of Democrats opposed it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said the measure “does violence to the Constitution of the United States.”
But with the Senate already in recess, Democrats confronted the choice of allowing the administration’s bill to reach the floor and be approved mainly by Republicans or letting it die.
If it stalled, that would have left Democratic lawmakers, who have long been anxious about appearing weak on national security issues, facing an August fending off charges from Bush and Republicans that they left Americans exposed to terror threats.
Despite the political risks, many Democrats argued they should stand firm against the president’s initiative, saying it granted the administration far too much latitude to initiate surveillance without judicial review. They said the White House was using the specter of terror to usurp the privacy rights of Americans and empower Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, an official Democrats said had proved himself untrustworthy. Under the bill, Gonzales would share authority with Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence.
“Legislation should not be passed in response to fear-mongering,” said Rep. Rush Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey.
There was no indication that lawmakers were responding to new intelligence warnings. Rather, Democrats were responding to administration pleas that a recent secret court ruling had created a legal obstacle in monitoring foreign communications relayed over the Internet.
But the disputes were significant enough that they were likely to resurface before the end of the year. Democrats have expressed concerns that the administration is reaching for powers that go well beyond solving what officials have depicted as narrow technical issues in the current law.
Bush on Saturday urged the House to act promptly after the Senate approved changes Friday night in the terrorist surveillance program sought by the administration.
Other Republicans called for swift House action as well. “I can’t imagine they would take a monthlong vacation without fulfilling their obligation to keep America safe,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.
Administration officials have been quietly pushing Congress to pass a broad “modernization” of the existing law, arguing that technological changes – especially the expansion of telephone calls over the Internet – had made the current rules outdated.
One key issue, apparently raised in secret by judges overseeing the problem, is that many calls and e-mail messages between people outside the United States are routed over data networks that run through the United States. In principle, the surveillance law does not restrict eavesdropping on foreign-to-foreign communications. But in practice, administration officials contend, the path of those calls through this country means the government cannot monitor them without a warrant.
Democratic lawmakers have been deeply suspicious that the administration was seeking a broader and more controversial expansion of surveillance authority by making changes that were vague on important issues. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday that the administration-supported bill would allow wiretapping without warrants as long as it was “concerning a person abroad.” As a result, he said, the law could be construed as allowing any search inside the United States as long as the government claimed it “concerned” al Qaeda.