[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 63 (Friday, May 19, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E888-E889]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                SUPPORT FOR THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. MICHAEL G. OXLEY

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 18, 2006

  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, as a strong supporter of the efforts being 
undertaken by the National Security agency to monitor and track 
terrorists, I commend to the attention of my colleagues the excellent 
piece by Mort Kondracke in today's Roll Call.
  Mr. Kondracke rightly notes that the NSA's interception of 
international terrorist communications is both legitimate and vital to 
the Global War on Terror.

                   [From the Roll Call, May 18, 2006]

      Ideological Conflict Menaces U.S. Ability to Fight Terrorism

                        (By Morton M. Kondracke)

       Enough already! It's harmful enough that ideological 
     conflict and partisan politics are preventing this country 
     from solving its long-term challenges on health care, fiscal 
     policy and energy. Now, it's threatening our national 
     survival.
       I do not exaggerate. Bush-hatred has reached such intensity 
     that CIA officers and other bureaucrats are leaking major 
     secrets about anti-terrorism policy and communications 
     intelligence that undermine our ability to fight Islamic 
     extremism.
       Would newspapers in the midst of World War II have printed 
     the fact that the U.S. had broken German and Japanese codes, 
     enabling the enemy to secure its communications? Or revealed 
     how and where Nazi spies were being interrogated? Nowadays, 
     newspapers win Pulitzer Prizes for such disclosures.
       In Congress and in much of the media, the immediate 
     reaction to news that the National Security Agency was 
     intercepting international terrorist communications was

[[Page E889]]

     not to say, ``Good work--and how can we help?'' Rather, it 
     was to scream about a ``domestic spying'' scandal, as though 
     Richard Nixon were back in the White House and tapping the 
     telephone of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard 
     Dean.
       And the reaction has been much the same to USA Today's 
     story last week that the NSA ``has been secretly collecting 
     the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans'' in 
     a program that ``reaches into the homes and businesses across 
     the nation by amassing information about the calls of 
     ordinary Arericans.''
       Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), ranking member on the Senate 
     Judiciary Committee, reacted by asserting that ``these are 
     tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of 
     anything but we're just going to collect their phone 
     information for the heck of it. Where does it stop?''
       Similarly, Newsweek's cover this week blares ``Spying On 
     Your Calls''--no question mark used--and implies that the 
     Bush White House could be tapping everyone's telephones.
       In fact, what seems to be happening, though the details are 
     secret, is that most long-distance phone companies have given 
     the NSA their billing records identifying what numbers are 
     calling what other nmbers, when and for how long. Names are 
     not included. And the NSA--not for the heck of it but to 
     protect us from attack--is using the records to track 
     terrorist networks and calling patterns. If a known terrorist 
     in Pakistan calls a number in Los Angeles, I want the 
     government to know what numbers that person calls. Don't you?
       Certainly, the government will find out the names of people 
     in a terrorist calling chain. If it wants to tap a domestic 
     phone, it needs a warrant and, unless officials are lying 
     through their teeth, it is asking for them.
       The NSA call logs also apparently are being mined to 
     establish patterns of terrorist-related communication--the 
     use of pay phones, duration of calls, times of communication, 
     etc.
       But all this scarcely constitutes ``reaching into homes and 
     businesses across the nation.'' If the government is snooping 
     into the business of anyone except terrorists (or drug 
     dealers, Mafiosi and child pornographers, whose names and 
     numbers also can be easily obtained with a subpoena), it is 
     wasting its time and our money.
       The phone companies that are cooperating with the 
     government ought to be congratulated for participating in the 
     war on terrorism--as they would have been in WWII. Instead, 
     they are being hauled before the Senate Judiciary Committee 
     as though they were criminals. And trial lawyers are circling 
     like vultures to make them pay zillions for alleged privacy 
     violations.
       As for myself, I'm sticking with AT&T as a long-distance 
     carrier because (according to news reports), it did 
     cooperate. If I had Qwest, which reportedly refused, I'd 
     cancel.
       Is there a potential for abuse in the NSA spying program? 
     There is. For instance, it would be all too easy for 
     officials to ask the NSA to trace the phone records of the 
     winners of those odious Pulitzers--James Risen of The New 
     York Times and Dana Priest of The Washington Post--in an 
     effort to uncover their sources in the name of ``protecting 
     secrets'' and ``fighting terrorism.''
       The Senate Intelligence Committee, when it quizzes former 
     NSA Director Michael Hayden in his CIA confirmation hearings 
     Friday, should establish that the terrorist surveillance 
     programs have not been abused, although there is no evidence 
     of it.
       To the extent he can do so without giving away secrets, 
     Hayden also should tell the committee and the country why 
     these programs are so essential and what the legal basis for 
     them is.
       If the administration believes, as officials often have 
     said, that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is 
     obsolete in the age of super-computers and terrorism, it 
     ought to work with Congress to rewrite the law. Skirting it 
     won't work anymore.
       But the fundamental problem infecting much of Congress, the 
     media and the political class especially those, left of 
     center--is that they are consumed with loathing for President 
     Bush and all his works and are prepared to do anything to 
     undermine him, even if it makes the country less safe.
       Yes, Republicans tried to destroy former President Bill 
     Clinton over sex and politics. But now Democrats what to 
     destroy Bush so badly that they are willing to undercut 
     national security.
       Everyone in Congress (and the CIA) should see the movie 
     ``United 93'' as a reminder of what we are up against, Muslim 
     fanatics will not only try to destroy the Capitol, but also 
     explode a nuclear bomb, if they can.
       And, people also should heed the warning delivered by 
     Princeton University professor Bernard Lewis, one of the 
     nation's foremost scholars of Islam, before the Pew Forum on 
     Religion and Public Life here last month.
       Lewis, now 90, cast the struggle with Islamic extremism in 
     WWII terms--it is 1938, he said, and ``we seem to be more in 
     the mode of Chamberlain at Munich rather than of Churchill.''
       Osama bin Laden and other would-be Hitlers, he said, 
     consider the United States ``an effete, degenerate, pampered 
     enemy incapable of real resistance.'' It's part of the 
     pattern that we fight among ourselves as much as against our 
     enemies. This is more than serious. It's dire.

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