Panel OKs wiretapping bill

BY TOM BRUNE | Newsday Washington Bureau

September 14, 2006

WASHINGTON - A Republican-controlled Senate panel yesterday approved legislation that would authorize President George W. Bush's controversial warrantless wiretapping program in return for his pledge to submit it for a review by a secret court.

In a 10-8 party-line vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the bill backed by the White House to the full Senate, giving a preview of the partisan split that will confront much of the national security legislation promoted by Bush for the fall's politically charged session.

With 2 1/2 weeks before Congress recesses for the Nov. 7 elections, the White House has made it a priority to win approval of a highly secretive and still operating National Security Agency program to intercept calls and e-mails between the U.S. and overseas in its hunt for terrorists.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the committee chairman and the bill's sponsor, said his legislation provided the best chance for the Supreme Court to rule on the president's authority to unilaterally order the program.

But under his bill, an appeal to the Supreme Court on the program would be up to the discretion of the administration, the White House and legal experts said yesterday.

Specter's bill would broadly revamp the existing law on domestic electronic surveillance: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was enacted in 1978 in response to government's abusive spying on citizens. FISA created a special secret court to issue warrants for domestic eavesdropping on foreign spies and terrorists.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and other committee Democrats complained the bill "guts" FISA, but Specter defended it by saying he was seeking to put the program under judicial review.

In return for broad changes in FISA, Specter said, Vice President Dick Cheney promised the White House would submit the program to the FISA court.

"The Senate cannot add to or subtract from the president's [Constitutional] Article II powers," Specter said. "That will be determined by the court."

The FISA court would hear only arguments from administration lawyers. Only the administration can appeal and probably would do so only if it loses.

Specter's bill also moves 29 cases filed against telecom companies involved in the program to the FISA court, providing another possible channel to the high court, a Senate aide said. But those cases could reach the court without Specter's bill.

But the committee on a party-line vote rejected a bill sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would have created a fast track for a challenge to the Supreme Court.

The committee did, however, also send two other bills on the program for Senate debate: A bill by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) that narrows Congressional oversight of the program, and, in a rare bipartisan vote, a bill sponsored by Specter and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that streamlines the warrant process but retains FISA's exclusive oversight of domestic surveillance.

Democrats favor this bill, but Republicans appear poised to support Specter's other bill.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee pulled its bill on FISA and the NSA program from consideration today as it reworked the language, a House spokesman said.