[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Page 13976]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  FISA

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, last April the Director of National 
Intelligence, ADM Mike McConnell, warned Congress about a serious flaw 
in the laws that govern our Nation's terror-fighting capabilities. New 
technologies had made our old electronic surveillance program 
dangerously out of date, he said, causing us to miss substantial 
amounts of vital intelligence on foreign terror suspects overseas.
  In reaction to these concerns, the Senate passed and the President 
signed a temporary measure, the Protect America Act. The Protect 
America Act lived up to its name. We are told that from the time of its 
passage last August until its expiration in February, it allowed us to 
collect significant intelligence on terrorists and has been critical in 
protecting the United States from harm. But the Protect America Act had 
a signal failure: the telecom companies that may have helped prevent 
terrorist attacks were not protected from potentially crippling 
lawsuits. This was no small thing since without these companies, 
America wouldn't even have an effective surveillance program. 
Bankrupting the telecoms would be like outlawing fire hydrants--you 
could have the best firetrucks and the best firemen in the world, but 
you would still be incapable of putting out fires.
  So after several months of new negotiations, the House finally 
devised and approved last week a revision of the original surveillance 
law that addresses the DNI's major concerns, including the important 
telecom protection. As the DNI put it in a recent letter endorsing the 
House-passed bill:

       This bill would provide the intelligence community with the 
     tools it needs to collect the foreign intelligence necessary 
     to secure our Nation while protecting the civil liberties of 
     Americans. The bill would also provide the necessary legal 
     protections for those companies sued because they are 
     believed to have helped the government prevent terrorist 
     attacks in the aftermath of September 11. Because this bill 
     accomplishes these two goals, essential to any effort to 
     modernize FISA, we strongly support passage and will 
     recommend the President sign it.

  That is the Director of National Intelligence.
  Passage of this legislation is long overdue. When the Protect America 
Act expired in February, the DNI warned Democratic leaders in the House 
once again about the need for an updated law. Yet House Democrats were 
evidently more concerned about the pressure they were getting from left 
wing groups such as moveon.org. They brushed the DNI's warnings aside 
and refused to take up and pass a bipartisan Senate-passed compromise 
bill that would have easily cleared the House. As a result of 
Democratic intransigence, our intelligence community has been 
handicapped in its ability to acquire new terrorist targets overseas. 
This was grossly irresponsible, and many of us said so at the time.
  Now more than a year after the DNI made his initial plea, House 
Democrats have finally done the right thing. They have acted on the 
DNI's warnings by passing an updated surveillance law that meets his 
original criteria and which meets the criteria Republicans laid out 
during last year's debate--namely, one that gives the intelligence 
community the tools it needs to protect us, which doesn't put the 
telecom companies that made this program possible out of business, and 
which would get a Presidential signature.
  Now it is time for the Senate to take up this bill and pass it 
without any further delay. The bill isn't perfect. I would have 
preferred for the Speaker to allow a vote on the Senate-passed FISA 
bill. But it does meet the DNI's criteria, and therefore its passage 
will mark a serious achievement, though long overdue, in the interest 
of our national security.
  This hard-fought bill represents the epitome of compromise. The 
senior Senator from Missouri should be singled out for his outstanding 
work on this most important piece of legislation. He has done a service 
to the Senate and to the Nation by patiently working all of this out 
over the course of more than a year.
  He was assisted in that effort by very able staff. Louis Tucker, Jack 
Livingston, and Kathleen Rice were invaluable throughout the process, 
to every Senator who was involved in this extremely important debate. 
They also deserve our thanks.
  I will support this bill for all the reasons I have mentioned and 
urge my colleagues to do the same. We must pass this before leaving 
town and not allow it to be held up by yet another Democratic 
filibuster.

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