Republicans Propose Bill on Spy Program
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer

Several moderate Senate Republicans are collecting support for a bill that would give President Bush's domestic surveillance program the force of law, more than four years after he secretly initiated the program.

The prospects for the draft legislation circulated Tuesday are far from certain. But Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, and three other moderate Republicans who have helped shaped the debate on intelligence issues — Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — are introducing legislation that has the general approval of the Senate's Republican and intelligence leadership.

Democrats on the Intelligence Committee expressed outrage after a meeting Tuesday that senators voted — along party lines — to reject an investigation of the surveillance proposed by West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the committee's top Democrat.

"The committee — to put it bluntly — basically is in the control of the White House," a visibly angry Rockefeller said.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he asked the committee to reject confrontation and accommodate an agreement with the White House to create a subcommittee of seven senators with broad oversight of the National Security Agency's terrorist monitoring.

"We should fight the enemy. We should not fight each other," Roberts said.

The 15-member panel agreed, over strong Democratic objections that the limited size of the group means Congress will be writing laws in the dark. "Our committee has to be fully informed if we are to guide the legislative debate on this program that is fast approaching," Rockefeller said.

The growing call for legislation has added pressure on the Bush administration to go along, and the White House indicated a broad approval for DeWine's bill.

"We think it is a generally sound measure," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "We have said we are committed to working with Congress on legislation that would further codify into law the president's authority to detect and prevent potential attacks."

Yet even as legislation is drafted, lawmakers are pressing for more details about the surveillance.

Rockefeller said he spent all of Friday at the NSA, seeking answers to more than 400 questions. He said it would take several visits to have a full understanding of the program, which allowed the administration to eavesdrop on international calls and e-mails of U.S. residents when terrorism is suspected.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., also threatened to write legislation to limit funding for the program if he can't get more information about it. "If we cannot find some political solution to the disagreement with the executive branch, our ultimate power is the power of the purse," Specter said.

Rivaling the DeWine approach, Specter is writing a separate bill that would allow the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the authority to give the program a broad constitutional blessing every 45 days. Specter's support remains unclear.

DeWine's bill would — for a time — exempt the president's surveillance program from a 1978 law aimed at governing electronic intelligence collection inside the United States.

The proposal, now being circulated on Capitol Hill, would allow the government to monitor suspected terrorists for up to 45 days without first seeking approval from the federal intelligence court. The government would then have three options: stop the surveillance, seek a warrant from the court, or come to Congress to explain why a warrant isn't possible.

DeWine said his approach would create a subcommittee to consider those requests and conduct in-depth oversight of the monitoring on a case-by-case basis.

Like the president's program, his bill covers only communications where one party is overseas and one is inside the United States.

The White House has said that Bush acted lawfully when he ordered the warrantless surveillance because he had the inherent authority as president and under a September 2001 resolution to use force in the war on terror. Although initially reluctant to work with Congress on a bill, the White House has come around in recent weeks as lawmakers threatened investigations.

Roberts and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., both indicated their support for the concept drafted by the moderate senators. But in a sign of how carefully lawmakers must handle the debate, Frist sought to make clear the president's actions are legal now.

"While I believe the president has the constitutional authority to conduct this program, I support the efforts by my colleagues to establish a statutory framework to conduct the program," he said in a statement.



Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments
Privacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy - Ad Feedback