Two Steps Back for National Security
Conn Carroll /
Intelligence and National Security Alliance chairman and former National Counterterrorism Center director and current foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama John Brennan told National Journal last week:
I do believe strongly that [telecoms] should be granted that immunity. They were told to [cooperate] by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context. I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that’s the right thing to do.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV) told the Los Angeles Times:
At the end of the day, it was clear to us that the companies believed their cooperation was necessary, legal and would help stop future terrorist attacks. Whether you agree or not with the president’s legal rationale is a separate issue.
The Senate has passed a bipartisan bill that updates 1978’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that brings our nation’s intelligence legal framework into the 21st century. The House has had 216 days since Congress knew a permanent fix to FISA was needed, and they have had 24 days since the last time they asked for an extension to pass legislation that could be reconciled with the Senate bill. Yesterday the House introduced and tomorrow they will pass a completely new FISA bill that is not intended to conference with the bipartisan Senate bill at all. House Democrats wrote their bill without any input from congressional Republicans or the White House. Yesterday the White House stated the obvious: the bill is dead on arrival.
As the Office of the Director of National Intelligence noted yesterday, the House bill has two huge flaws which will severely hamper the capabilities of U.S. intelligence services to protect us. First, the House bill would require prior court approval before allowing surveillance targeting on foreign terrorists located outside the U.S. This new requirement will result in the loss of vital intelligence by delaying intelligence collection. Intelligence missed through such delays is intelligence lost forever. Second, the House bill still does not provide the protections for telecommunications companies necessary to ensure the future cooperation of the private sector in the protection of U.S. national security.
The abject scaremongering by the left on “the NSA’s warrantless domestic spying” is not supported by any facts. The details of the program in question have not, and should not, be revealed. But from what we can piece together from the public record, the program in question touched domestic communications only incidentally and there is zero evidence anywhere that anyone innocent Americans have had their telephone calls listened to or their emails read. (more…)