WASHINGTON, July 13: In a reversal, the White House has agreed to allow a secret federal court review of the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic spying programme, a top Senate Republican announced on Thursday.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he had negotiated a bill with the White House to update surveillance laws and clear the way for an examination of the constitutionality of the programme designed to track terrorists.
“We have structured a bill which is agreeable to the White House and I think will be agreeable to this committee,” Specter told the panel, which will vote on it perhaps later this month after members have had an opportunity to review it.
Mr Specter’s fellow Republicans voiced support for the deal while some Democrats expressed reservations and said they wanted to get the details.
Mr Specter and other lawmakers had pressed Bush to seek clearance from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for the spying programme, implemented after the Sept. 11 attacks and first disclosed last December by The New York Times.
While the bill does not mandate a court review, Specter said Mr Bush agreed to submit the overall programme to such an examination — provided the legislation is approved by Congress or changed in a manner acceptable to the president.
Mr Specter earlier said the administration may have broken the law in allowing the NSA to monitor international phone calls and e-mails of US citizens without first obtaining warrants.
The 1978 act requires warrants from the court for intelligence-related eavesdropping inside the United States.
But Mr Bush had defended the NSA programme, saying he had the power and responsibility in wartime to protect the nation.
The proposed measure would give the government seven rather than the current three days to obtain a warrant in an emergency and grant the attorney general greater flexibility in requesting such an emergency. It would also provide for roving wiretaps that target individuals rather than specific telephones.
DEMOCRAT CONCERNS: Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, raised concerns.
“The president ... is saying ‘if you do every single thing I tell you to do,’ I will do what I should have done anyway,” he said.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, “We’ve reached a significant and very good deal for us with Senator Specter.”
“The bill recognizes the president’s constitutional authority and modernizes FISA to meet the threats we face from an enemy that knows no bounds, kills with abandon and masquerades as they plot against us,” Perino said.
Specter said that under the deal the court would determine the programme’s constitutionality based, in part, on arguments presented by the administration.
The court would also examine if the programme is “reasonably designed to ensure that the communications intercepted involve a terrorist, agent of a terrorist or someone reasonably believed to have communicated or associated with a terrorist.”—Reuters