[Infowarrior] - Panel Drops Immunity From Eavesdropping Bill

[Richard Forno]

Panel Drops Immunity From Eavesdropping Bill
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/washington/16nsa.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pag
ewanted=print

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 ‹ Reflecting the deep divisions within Congress over
granting legal immunity to telephone companies for cooperating with the Bush
administration¹s program of wiretapping without warrants, the Senate
Judiciary Committee approved a new domestic surveillance law on Thursday
that sidestepped the issue.

By a 10 to 9 vote, the committee approved an overhaul of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act that dropped a key provision for immunity for
telecommunications companies that another committee had already approved.
The Senate leadership will have to decide how to deal with the immunity
question on the Senate floor.

On Thursday night, the House voted 227 to 189, generally along party lines,
to approve its own version of the FISA bill, which also does not include
immunity.

But the administration has made clear that President Bush will veto any bill
that does not include what it considers necessary tools for government
eavesdropping, including the retroactive immunity for phone carriers that
took part in the National Security Agency¹s wiretapping program after the
Sept. 11 attacks.

Since the N.S.A. program was disclosed nearly two years ago, the major
telephone companies have been sued by civil liberties groups and others, who
argue that the companies violated the privacy rights of millions of
Americans.

After lobbying by the telecommunications industry and the White House, the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence agreed to the legal protection last
month. Under a complicated legislative process, the Intelligence Committee¹s
bill had to be considered by the Judiciary Committee before it could go to
the floor of the Senate for a vote.

Because the two committees could not agree, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada,
the majority leader, will determine which proposals will be considered by
the full Senate, said a spokeswoman for the Judiciary Committee.

³The full Senate will yet need to resolve the immunity issue,² Senator
Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, said in a statement after the committee vote.

Even as Mr. Leahy sent the bill to the full Senate without dealing with the
immunity issue, there were efforts by leading Democrats and Republicans to
strike a compromise.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the panel,
is pushing a plan that would substitute the federal government as the
defendant in the lawsuits against the telecommunications companies. That
would mean that the government, not the companies, would pay damages in
successful lawsuits.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said in an interview
after the vote Thursday that he would support a compromise along the lines
of the Specter proposal.

Mr. Whitehouse was one of two Democrats who voted against an amendment
proposed by Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, that would have
banned immunity for the companies. ³I think there is a good solution
somewhere in the middle,² Mr. Whitehouse said.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who also opposed Mr.
Feingold¹s measure, pleaded with Mr. Leahy to defer the immunity issue
because she wants more time to consider several compromise proposals.

In the House, Republicans complained before the vote on Thursday that
Democrats had blocked efforts to change the final bill through parliamentary
procedures. Representative Dan Lungren, Republican of California, said the
Democrats were playing ³political games² on ³one of the single most
important issues we will deal with this year or this Congress.²

The plan, Mr. Lungren charged, would tie the hands of the N.S.A. and give
³greater protection to Osama bin Laden than an American citizen² by
preventing intelligence officials from disseminating intercepts that had
been inadvertently collected.

But Democrats and said their bill struck the right balance between
protecting the United States from another terrorist attack and protecting
the rights of Americans. The vote, said Representative Rush D. Holt of New
Jersey, was ³another chance to get things right² after what he characterized
as the flawed bill that was hurriedly passed by Congress in August before
its summer recess.

The Senate Intelligence Committee¹s bill was the result of a compromise
between Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is
chairman of the panel, and the White House. Mr. Rockefeller agreed to the
immunity measure, and in exchange won the administration¹s support for other
provisions that would provide greater court oversight of the government¹s
eavesdropping operations.