[Mb-civic] Activists on Right, GOP Lawmakers Divided on Spying - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Activists on Right, GOP Lawmakers Divided on Spying
Privacy Concerns, Terror Fight at Odds

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; A04

Despite President Bush's warnings that public challenges to his domestic 
surveillance program could help terrorists, congressional Republicans 
and conservative activists are split on the issue and are showing no 
signs of reconciling soon.

GOP lawmakers and political activists were nearly unanimous in backing 
Bush on his Supreme Court nominations and Iraq war policy, but they are 
divided on how to resolve the tension between two principles they hold 
dear: avoiding government intrusion into private lives, and combating 
terrorism. The rift became evident at yesterday's Senate Judiciary 
Committee hearing into the surveillance program, and it may reemerge at 
Thursday's intelligence committee hearing.

Bush and his allies have tried to squelch criticisms by suggesting that 
it is virtually unpatriotic to question the program's legality.

"Our enemy is listening," Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the 
Judiciary Committee at the start of a day-long hearing into the National 
Security Agency's warrantless monitoring of Americans' phone calls and 
e-mails with foreign-based people suspected of terrorist ties. "And I 
cannot help but wonder if they aren't . . . smiling at the prospect that 
we might now disclose even more, or perhaps even unilaterally disarm 
ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror."

Several Republican committee members joined Democrats in pressing 
Gonzales to explain how the recently revealed surveillance program 
complies with the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which 
provides for secret warrants to monitor communications involving 
terrorism suspects.

"There are a lot of people who think you're wrong," the committee 
chairman, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), told Gonzales. Specter asked why 
surveillance requests were not taken to the FISA court "as matter of 
public confidence."

Gonzales doggedly defended the NSA program, but Specter said in a 
late-afternoon interview that public uneasiness may force the 
administration to give ground.

"The whole history of America is a history of balance," Specter said, 
referring to security and civil liberties. "I think there's a chance the 
administration might take up the idea of putting this whole issue before 
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. . . . I think they are 
seeing concerns in a lot of directions from all segments: Democrats and 
Republicans in all shades of the political spectrum."

When Gonzales argues that the Constitution gives the president 
undisputable powers to conduct warrantless surveillance despite a 
statute aimed at requiring him to seek court approval, such an 
interpretation "is not sound," Specter said in the interview. ". . . 
He's smoking Dutch Cleanser."

Among those strongly backing Gonzales yesterday were Republican Sens. 
Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), John Cornyn (Tex.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.). "We 
are not going hog wild restraining American liberties," Sessions told 
Gonzales. "In fact, the trend has been to provide more and more 
protections."

Some of the NSA program's sharpest critics have been libertarian groups, 
such as the Cato Institute.

"The overriding issue that's at stake in these hearings is the stance of 
the administration that they're going to decide in secrecy which laws 
they're going to follow and which laws they can bypass," said Timothy 
Lynch, director of Cato's project on criminal justice. Conservative Web 
sites and blogs appear to be "fairly evenly divided" on the NSA program, 
he said.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) joined Specter in challenging Gonzales's 
assertion that Congress implicitly approved the surveillance tactics 
when it voted to authorize military force in combating terrorism shortly 
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"This 'statutory force resolution' argument that you're making is very 
dangerous in terms of its application for the future," Graham told 
Gonzales. "When I voted for it, I never envisioned that I was giving to 
this president or any other president the ability to go around FISA 
carte blanche."

Democrats making similar arguments have fallen under scathing attacks 
from some GOP lawmakers. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate 
intelligence committee, put himself at odds with Specter last week after 
his panel questioned the director of national intelligence and the CIA 
director about the NSA program.

"I am concerned that some of my Democrat colleagues used this unique 
public forum to make clear that they believe the gravest threat we face 
is not Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, but rather the president of the 
United States," Roberts said.

He also issued a lengthy letter defending the administration's 
arguments. With more congressional hearings on the NSA program scheduled 
this month, Republicans may have to scurry to keep such rebukes from 
targeting some of their own.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601463.html?nav=hcmodule
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