Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate the recognition. To begin, to clarify for the floor and our colleagues the arrangement the chairman and I have on this bill, I ask unanimous consent that…
Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate the recognition.
To begin, to clarify for the floor and our colleagues the arrangement the chairman and I have on this bill, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Rockefeller manage the time in opposition to the Specter amendment and that I manage the time in opposition to the Dodd and Bingaman amendments.
Mr. President, as I mentioned earlier today, the Senate is poised to wrap up consideration of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008 in the form of H.R. 6304. Now, most of my colleagues know this legislation has had a way of hanging around for quite awhile, being caught up in the congressional process. Many, including myself, believe we should have passed it well before now, but it appears that we are on about the
5 yard line and ready to move it across into the end zone. As one who believes this badly needed update to FISA will enhance our Nation's security and advance and protect America's civil liberties and privacy rights, I certainly hope a strong majority of the Senate will pass this legislation unamended tomorrow.
Some of my colleagues have been intent on using Senate procedures to slow this legislation to a snail's pace. They have succeeded in doing so, first by choosing to ignore the Director of National Intelligence-- and I will call him the DNI from now on--the DNI's pleas for modernization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, as we will call it, in April 2007, for over 3 months, until August of 2007, and back in December of 2007 when a Democratic Member filibustered us past the end of the year and into the recess, into 2008. It came to the floor in February when it took us several weeks to work out a way to move forward; then, once again, over the past few weeks, with another Democratic Member filibuster of sorts that pushed us past last week's recess. Up until now, we have been delayed, but one thing is sure in the Senate. Just as they say in military and basic training: No matter what you do, you can't stop the clock. Now that some of my colleagues are out of time in delaying any further, the Senate will move ahead this week, despite all of these delays.
I am very proud of the comprehensive compromise legislation before us today which passed out of the House with a strong bipartisan vote of 293 to 129. That was almost 3 weeks ago. As with the Senate's original FISA bill that passed several months ago, the compromise that is before us required a little give from all sides but, in essence, what we have before us today is basically the Senate bill all over again. Everyone who studied the language recognizes that. I have here a detailed legislative history that I will ask unanimous consent to be printed in the Record that explains the provisions of the bill. Chairman Rockefeller submitted his own legislative history before the recess, and while we largely agree on the description of the legislation, we do have a few key differences. So as Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I believe it is important to make my views and those of several other Senators a part of the legislative history of this bill by including it in the Record. I therefore ask unanimous consent to have this legislative description printed in the Record as part of my remarks.
Mr. President, before the recess I mentioned how the press picked up on the similarities between this bill and the Senate bill and how they kept asking me to help find out the big changes in the bill that no one could find. Well, they stopped asking me that question because they realized there is not much that is significantly different, save some cosmetic fixes that satisfied the House Democratic leadership. Since we started with a bipartisan product here in the Senate, that means we still have a very strong bipartisan bill before us.
I am very pleased that the strong liability protections the Senate bill offered are still in place and our vital intelligence sources and intelligence methods will be safeguarded. I am pleased this compromise preserves the ability of the intelligence community to collect foreign intelligence quickly and in exigent circumstances without any prior court review. I am also pleased that the 2012 sunset--3 years longer than any sunset previously offered in any House bill--will give our intelligence collectors the certainty they need and the tools they use to keep us safe. I am confident that the few changes we made to the Senate bill in H.R. 6304 will not diminish the intelligence community's ability to target terrorists overseas, and the Director of National Intelligence--the DNI--and the Attorney General agree.
I will highlight for my colleagues five of the six main tweaks to the Senate bill that we find in the bill before us, as nuanced as they may be. I say ``five'' because one of these tweaks I explained in detail before the recess. I trust all of my colleagues remember that discussion very clearly. It was that the civil liability protection provision was slightly modified but still ensures that the companies who may, in good faith, have assisted the Government in the terrorist surveillance program, or TSP, will receive relief. Another way to describe it is that we have essentially provided the district court with an appellate standard review just as we did in the Senate bill. Congress affirms in this legislation that the lawsuits will be dismissed unless the district court judge determines that the Attorney General's certification was not supported by substantial evidence based on the information the Attorney General provides to the court. The intent of Congress is clear. The Intelligence Committee found that the companies deserve liability protection. They were asked by legitimate Government authorities to assist them in a program to keep our country safe. They did it, and now they are being thanked by lawsuits designed not only to destroy their reputation but to destroy the program.
There are several misconceptions that were brought up in the discussions today. Several have said that we don't know what we are granting immunity for; we shouldn't grant it without reviewing the litigation; and there were 70 Members of the Senate who haven't even been briefed on the program. Well, the reason the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was set up was to review some of the most important and highly classified intelligence-gathering activities of the intelligence community. It was agreed, as we all believe very strongly, that these are very important tools. No. 1, they must be overseen carefully to make sure that the constitutional rights, the privacy rights of American citizens, are protected, and at the same time, within the constitutional framework, the ability of the limited authority of the intelligence community to collect the intelligence is not inhibited. That is what the Senate Intelligence Committee has done in reporting out this bill on a 13-to-2 vote. I am very pleased that our colleagues showed confidence in us by passing this, essentially the same measure, 68 to 29 in February.
There are some who say we don't even know whom we are granting immunity to or what we are granting it to. Very simply, the people--the carriers, the good citizens--who responded to the request to protect our country from terrorist acts are now being sued, and some of them who didn't even participate may be sued. They can't say whether they participated. We are only saying if the Attorney General provides information to be judged on an appellate standard that is not without substantial supporting evidence, then these companies should be dismissed, either because they didn't participate or they participated in good faith.
It does not, as I pointed out, say the Government cannot be sued. There are some who believe--and I think they are wrong--that the President's TSP was unlawful. That can be litigated in the court system. It is being litigated. I will discuss further Judge Walker's opinion and why I think it is wrong and it will not stand up, but that doesn't change the fact that at the time the Attorney General told these American companies, these good citizens, that it was lawful for them to participate and they needed that help, they provided that help, and helped to keep our country safe. We should not thank them by slapping them with lawsuits that would not only destroy their reputation, endanger their personnel here and abroad, but potentially disclose even more of the operations of our very sensitive electronic surveillance program. The more the terrorists who wish to do us harm learn about it, the better able they are to defend against it.
These three amendments all seek to destroy that protection provided by good corporate citizens, patriotic Americans who are responding to a directive of the President, approved by the Attorney General.
Moving on to the first of the five items I haven't discussed, the first item is the concept of prior court review that was included in this language. It is important for all of us to understand that prior court review is not prior court approval. Prior court approval occurs when the court approves the actual acquisition of electronic surveillance as it does in the domestic FISA context. Prior court review, on the other hand, is limited to the court's review of the Government's certification and the targeting and minimization procedures. The prior court review contained in this bill is essentially the same as it was under the bipartisan Senate bill. However, the timing has been changed to allow the court to conduct its review before the Attorney General and the DNI authorize actual acquisition.
The bottom line here is that what many of us feared in prior court approval scenarios has been avoided. To ensure that will always remain the case, we have included a generous ``exigent circumstances'' provision offered by House Majority Leader Hoyer that allows the Attorney General and the DNI to act immediately if intelligence may be lost or not timely acquired. I thank Leader Hoyer for that suggestion. Thus, a finding of exigent circumstances requires a much lower threshold than an emergency under traditional FISA.
One of our nonnegotiables in reaching this agreement is that the continued intelligence collection would be assured and uninterrupted by court procedures and delays. It is only because this broad ``exigent circumstances'' exemption allows for continuous collection that I can wholeheartedly support this nuanced version of prior court review of the DNI and the AG authorizations.
Second, we agreed to language insisted upon by House Speaker Pelosi regarding an ``exclusive means'' provision. I am confident that the exclusive means provision we have agreed to will not--and indeed cannot--preclude the
President from exercising his constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance. That is the President's article II constitutional power that no statute can remove, and case law, including recent statements in opinions by the FISA Court itself, reaffirmed this.
I am aware, as several people have discussed, of the district court's ruling last week in California where, in a suit against the Government, the judge stated in dicta that:
Congress appears clearly to have intended to--and did--
establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence
surveillance activities to be conducted.
Interestingly, Judge Walker ignored legislative history which acknowledged the President's inherent constitutional authority. Even though it may have been placed at the lowest ebb, if you agree with that interpretation of the constitutional limitations cited in the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the Senate FISA bill, he still has that authority.
For a variety of reasons, I strongly believe Judge Walker's decision will not stand on appeal. As to the court's comments on exclusive means, there is a fair amount of dictum standing in opposition to his opinion. I happen to think it is right.
For example, the FISA Court in 2002 ruled In re: Sealed Case--a very important decision which I urge everybody to read, if they have time-- noted with approval the U.S. Fourth Circuit's holding in the Truong case that the President does have ``inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information.''
The Truong case involved a U.S. person in the United States, and the surveillance was ordered by the Carter administration without getting a warrant. The Fourth Circuit upheld that action in the criminal prosecution of Truong.
These decisions, along with others like them, were ignored by the analysis of the district court judge last week. At most, this exclusive means provision only places the President at his lowest ebb under the third prong of the steel seizure case analysis, which I do not accept as being valid. But if you use that test, it still exists.
That is exactly where the President was when FISA was passed in 1978, and the revised exclusive means provision in this bill does not change that fact.
We should remember, however, even at its lowest ebb, the President's authority with respect to intercepting enemy communications is still quite strong, especially when compared to the nonexistent capability of Congress to engage in similar interception activities.
It has been said that the President initiated this without any congressional notice. I was not among them at the time, but I understand the Gang of 8 was thoroughly briefed before they started this program. The Gang of 8, for those who may be listening and may not be aware, consists of the Republican and Democratic leaders and second leaders in this body and the other body and the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and the Senate Intelligence Committees. I believe these people were briefed on this program, and I understand that advice was given in that meeting that we could not change the FISA statute to enable the collection of vital information in any timely fashion; that we could not wait to start listening in on foreign terrorists abroad, possibly plotting against this country, until we passed it.
I think they were right. It has been 15 months since we were told that we needed to revise FISA. Outside of one 6-month, 15-day patch that we elected to adopt last August, we have not been able to change it. I hope a mere 15 months will allow us to change it. But the fact is, had we not had the concurrence of the Gang of 8 in the TSP, it is likely we would not be talking with shock and horror about 9/11, but we would be talking about other similar incidents occurring in the United States.
I believe with respect to the Speaker's own language, conditional language that she offered to us, it actually reinforces the President's article II authority. That bill language we accepted states:
If a certification . . . for assistance to obtain foreign
intelligence information is based on statutory authority, the
certification shall identify the specific statutory provision
and shall certify that the statutory requirements have been
met.
The obvious implication from this language is if a certification is not based on statutory authority, then citing statutory authority would be unnecessary. This language acknowledges that certifications may be based on something other than statutory authority; namely, the President's inherent constitutional authority. Furthermore, the DNI and Attorney General have assured me there will not be any operational impediments due to this provision. From a constitutional perspective, this language actually improved upon what we were looking at before in the Senate.
What Congress is clearly saying in this language is FISA is the exclusive statutory means for conducting electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes.
I am well aware that some will argue that there is no nonstatutory or constitutional means, but I can remember a long time ago when I was in a basic constitutional law course in law school that the Constitution trumps statutes. What the Constitution gives in rights or powers or authority cannot be exterminated, eliminated, or taken out by statute.
The courts have clearly said the President has that constitutional authority. I mentioned the Carter administration and the Truong case, but on a historical note, it is interesting to note that when President Clinton ordered a warrantless physical search, not electronic eavesdropping but a more intrusive, actual physical search of Aldrich Ames' residence in 1993, Congress responded by seeking to bolster the President's authority by updating FISA to include physical searches.
Aldrich Ames is a U.S. citizen, probably still in prison. Let's pause and think about that: President Clinton ordered a warrantless physical search of an American citizen inside the United States, and what did Congress do? Congress sought to assist the President instead of accuse him of illegal activity. It sought to help him. I would hope some of my colleagues would take a similar approach as we did with President Clinton before.
Third, as a part of our compromise with the House Democrats, we agreed to replace our version of what we call a carve-out from the definition of electronic surveillance with their definition of a carve- out which they call construction. Operationally, there is no difference between the two approaches, but we think our approach is more forthright with the American people because we put our carve-out right up front instead of burying it several chapters later in title VII of FISA as they wanted to do.
Why did they do this? I am sure this is not of great moment to anybody here, but let me say that it was clear from negotiations the other side wanted to be able to come out of the negotiations and say: We wrestled the Republicans back to the original definition of ``electronic surveillance'' in the 1978 FISA Act, but they failed to mention they buried their carve-out deep in this legislation, and it has the same effect.
They also failed to remind folks it was the original language of the 1978 FISA Act that, due to technology changes, got us into this mess in the first place.
Last year, when the DNI first asked us to modernize FISA, he requested we create a technology-neutral definition of ``electronic surveillance.'' I believed then and I still believe we should redefine ``electronic surveillance.'' FISA is complicated enough, and we should be forthright with the American people.
But some other leaders prefer for political reasons to bury construction provisions deep within the bill instead of presenting an upfront, crystal-clear carve-out. One consequence of their approach is that the same acquisition activities the Government uses to target non- U.S. persons overseas will trigger both the definition of electronic surveillance in title I of FISA and the construction provision in section 7.
Essentially, we have agreed to build an unnecessary internal inconsistency in statute as a political compromise. I reluctantly agreed to do this because the DNI and the Attorney General assured us that going for the carve-out
now would not create any operational problems for the intelligence community, but we should fix this in the future during less politically charged times.
For historical note, it should be remembered that the American Government was able to intercept radio communications long before we got into this stage of the intercepts without getting court orders. They were intercepting overseas communications which might have been coming into the United States, and they followed the same procedure that we do now. That was called the procedure of minimization for innocent conversations. Just like the case back when the radio interceptions were going forward, there is not, as I have said before, any evidence that we have seen that innocent Americans were being listened in on.
The bugaboo that this gives the intelligence community the right to listen in on ordinary citizens' conversations willy-nilly, without any limitations, is absolutely false. That is why we built in the protections in the law. That is why we have the layers of supervision to make sure it does not happen.
Fourth, we included a provision for coordinated inspector general audits of the TSP. However, the IGs will not review the substance of the legal reviews related to the President's TSP. In other words, they will not review whether the program was lawful.
I know some colleagues are saying the opposite in the media, but I encourage them to read the language because it is accurate. It is accurate that the IGs will not review whether the program was lawful.
The Senate Intelligence Committee already conducted an exhaustive review of the TSP and found no legal or unlawful conduct. There is no need for an IG audit to second-guess the bipartisan determination. Numerous IGs have already conducted reviews, and several reviews are ongoing. I cannot imagine the IG finding out anything different than they already have or that the Intelligence Committee has found for that matter. But it does make for good politics in an election year to say Congress mandated these reviews even if, in some cases, they will simply be doing reviews that have already been done. To reach agreement, we reluctantly agreed to a more redundant review on the overly taxed intelligence community.
I offer to those who want to challenge the lawfulness of the President's Terrorist Surveillance Program that this bill does not block plaintiff suits against the Government or Government officials. We only offer civil liability protection for providers in the bill. The court case I mentioned earlier against the Government will be able to proceed unaffected by this legislation.
Fifth, and finally, we agreed to a 5-year sunset instead of 6 years. I don't like sunsets. As intelligence community leaders have told us, there are no sunsets in fatwahs against the United States issued by al- Qaida leaders. I only agreed to a 6-year sunset in the Senate bill as a bipartisan compromise. But even with a 5-year sunset, Congress is unlikely to take up FISA reform again in the fall of a Presidential election year, and I trust they will have the good wisdom to push the sunset out longer so they don't find themselves in an election year going through the same drill. Regardless, there is little operational impact.
Remember, it is the job of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to conduct ongoing, continuing oversight of electronic surveillance, as well as the rest of the intelligence community's programs. If we see the need to make changes before sunset, we will. A sunset does not change that.
In the end, I am proud to say we accomplished our collective goals of making sure we have a bill with clear authorities for foreign targeting, with strong protections for U.S. persons, and with civil liability protection for those providers who allegedly assisted with the President's TSP. We are in a better position today than we were a few months ago legislatively because we not only have the Senate bill before us in essence all over again--and one that received 68 votes the last time--but we have it before us already having passed the House. We know we have a bill we can send straight to the President that the Attorney General and DNI would support and the President can sign into law.
Should we fail to do so, there is a real danger we could fall back into the trap we were in last summer when because of the existing underlying outmoded FISA bill, we put the intelligence community out of business of collecting much vital intelligence during a brief period, far too long, but brief nevertheless.
Why is having essentially the Senate bill with minor tweaks before us all over again a major bipartisan victory? I answer: Because the Senate bill we passed a few months ago was the delicate bipartisan compromise that took months to produce. We had the bipartisan product that increased civil liability protections more than ever before and gave our intelligence operators the tools they needed to keep us safe. I am proud of that bipartisan bill, proud to have negotiated with the House to bring it back to the Senate with essentially the same position in a major bipartisan victory for all sides.
Mr. President, I will reserve the rest of my comments in appreciation of my colleagues. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
Of course. I would be honored.
Well, to reply to my friend--who served in the past on the Intelligence Committee, I believe--that committee was set up to handle matters that involved the most critical classified information. The committee was set up, long before I came to the Senate, to provide a forum, a bipartisan group of Senators with a very able staff, to go over everything that was done in the intelligence community, to oversee it, to make sure it was proper, to make sure it stayed within the guidelines and to provide support and change it where necessary.
Now, I have fought very strongly, alongside my colleague, the chairman, to get the full committee briefed on all these programs. As I have said before, the terrorist surveillance program was not briefed to the full committee, it was briefed and then oversight held with eight people. This, to me, was a mistake. I believe it should have been briefed to the entire committee, but the members of that group of eight did know about it and were briefed about it.
Now, I might say to my good friend, the Senator from Pennsylvania, that we have many important committees putting out legislation on the floor. No person can participate in all the committee work. No person can be involved
in every committee. So we have to take the reports, and usually on a bipartisan agreement or disagreement, based on what our colleagues in those committees have studied, have reviewed, and have found to be the case. In this case, an overwhelmingly bipartisan majority of 13 to 2, after studying the bill and the question for 6 months and engaging in about 2 solid months of hard work, found out it was appropriate to give retroactive liability protection to these companies that had acted in good faith.
We were shown the certifications and the authorizations that went to them, and I believe, based on my legal background, that those were adequate and sufficient for these companies to participate. Let us remember, these were critical times. We had just experienced an attack. We were being threatened with more attacks. The Government went to some of these--not all of them but some--companies and said: Please help us. You must help us. We believe in the committee that their actions should not be punished but should be rewarded by preventing them from being harassed by lawsuits.
The legality of the program, if it is to be judged, was not one for a judgment for those companies to make, but it will be played out in Judge Walker's and other courtrooms.
Mr. President, I am happy to answer my colleague. He has stated that the Executive has violated the laws. Not under the constitutional authority that I have outlined. The FISA Court itself recognized what he fails to understand; that it is not a question of the carriers being held liable for any amount of money. Because I agree with him, they are not going to find anybody liable. But what they would do, by continuing having this out in open hearing, is to disclose the most secretive methods and procedures used by our intelligence community, giving the terrorists and those who seek to do us harm a roadmap for getting around it and avoiding those intercepts.
Now, what it would also do is expose those companies to tremendous public scorn and possibly even to injury to their property or to their personnel. Where they operate overseas, they might be attacked. When we started this debate, my colleague, the senior Senator from Illinois, was talking about how an unwarranted disclosure of a question about one of the vitally important exchanges operating in Chicago had cost billions of dollars to that exchange.
When you leak out something that is classified, when you leak out something that is secret, you can have a tremendous impact, and every shareholder of that exchange and every shareholder, whether it be in your pension fund or anyone else, of one of the carriers that might be drawn out and drawn into court in one of these actions, would lose significantly.
Now, to answer the question put specifically by the Senator from Pennsylvania, the cases against the Government are not blocked. The cases against the Government are not blocked. If we are looking for a means of determining the constitutionality, which I believe exists--he obviously doesn't believe exists. OK, we have a disagreement. He is a learned lawyer, and I studied constitutional law a long time ago. We have different views. I can line up a bunch of constitutional law professors on my side. I am sure he can do the same. But that court can go forward because a suit really is a suit against the government.
I think he is right when he is saying he doesn't want to hurt the companies. I don't believe any significant number of Members of this body want to hurt the employees or their shareholders of the companies that may have participated because they were true American heroes. But if he wants to solve the problem that he has--getting court review-- then there is no bar in this legislation to a suit against the Government, a Government officer, or a Government agent.
Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes in opposition.
When the inspector general audit provisions were first discussed in the House and Senate, there was a great concern that these audits would be used to delay or deny essential civil liability protections. Unfortunately, this amendment shows that these concerns were justified.
When negotiating this compromise legislation with House Majority Leader Hoyer, I agreed in good faith to a limited inspector general review of the President's terrorist surveillance program even though this program has been reviewed up and down on a bipartisan basis by the Senate Intelligence Committee and no abuse or wrongdoing had been found.
Now, in what I could only assume is a political move to undermine the critical civil liability protections in this bill, this amendment delays any liability protection until 90 days after the inspector general review of the bill is completed. What is supposed to happen after that is anything but clear, but I can only assume that will be followed by yet another effort to delay liability relief. That is extraordinarily and unacceptably unfair to those providers that assisted the Government in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. We owe them our thanks, not our continued partisan maneuvering.
Earlier, we heard a justification for exposing these providers to public light, having participated in a classified program. The assertion was made: It is like our troops who go abroad and go under fire. Mr. President, as the father of a son who spent 20 months in the last 3 years as a marine sniper in Iraq, I can tell you that they go under tremendous threat and tremendous danger. But they are extremely well trained, they are extremely well supported, and they are extremely well armed.
To say with a straight face that we can subject private companies to that, private companies with American citizens working for them, and that we don't care if they are attacked when they don't have any protection, they don't have any weapons, they don't have any training, I think goes way too far.
That is not reasonable. Let's not hear any more of that stuff, that they should be put in the same position as our trained military men and women who go into battle accepting the risks of battle. These people, these good American citizens, did not expect to be under physical attack.
How often are we going to tell those patriotic Americans we have to delay further any halt to the lawsuits so we can ``review'' the terrorist surveillance program? Enough is enough. Inspectors general have very clear roles in our Government. They determine if there is waste, fraud, or abuse. Their review under title IV of this bill is essentially for these purposes. They will not determine whether the TSP was lawful. They will not determine whether the providers acted in good faith. That is for the court to do.
So exactly what purpose does it serve to delay liability relief to these companies? The only purpose I can think of is to appease these liberal activists who
have tried repeatedly throughout this FISA debate to tie the hands of the intelligence community and punish these companies with frivolous lawsuits.
What message are we sending to all of those private partners who help our intelligence community, our military, our law enforcement community on a daily basis far beyond the FISA context: Help us now, but we cannot guarantee that years later you will not be taken to the cleaners because you did. Is that an incentive? Is that the way we want to deal with fellow Americans whose help we need?
I appreciate there is serious debate about whether the President has article II authority to conduct surveillance. But this is a debate that should not impact whether these providers, who trusted their Government, who in good faith, on the word of the Attorney General, helped to ensure our homeland did not suffer another terrorist attack. And we think they should be treated fairly and protected.
We need to remember the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted an exhaustive review of the TSP. It found no evidence of illegal or unlawful conduct either by the providers or the Government. We agreed on a bipartisan basis, ratified by the Senate, that the providers acted in good faith. So I do not see how waiting to give them the fair and just relief they deserve advances any goals. It is more likely, the longer these lawsuits, these frivolous lawsuits go on, that our most sensitive sources and methods will be revealed. It becomes much more likely that the providers who helped us will refuse to do so unless we go through a lengthy process to compel them.
We went without cooperation for some time when the act expired, and it was only on the assurance of prompt action that they were able to withstand shareholder pressure and the advice of lawyers not to worry.
The Attorney General and the DNI sent a letter on July 7. It says:
Any FISA modernization bill must contain effective legal
protection for those companies sued because they're believed
to have helped the Government prevent terrorist attacks.
Liability protection, a fair and just result, is necessary to
ensure the continued assistance of the private sector.
H.R. 6304 contains such protection, but the amendment
addressed in this letter
Essentially the Bingaman amendment--
would unnecessarily delay implementation of the protections
with the purpose of deferring any decision on this issue for
more than a year.
Accordingly, we as well as the President's other senior
advisors will recommend that the President veto any bill that
includes such an amendment. The Intelligence Committee has
recognized the intelligence community cannot obtain
intelligence it needs without assistance from these
companies. We recognize that the companies in the future may
be less willing to assist the Government if they face the
threat of lawsuits, and we know that a delay could result in
the very degradation and the cooperation that this bill was
designed to provide. Continued delay in protecting those who
provided assistance will be invariably noted by those who may
some day be called upon to help us again.
Finally, by raising the prospect that the litigation at
issue could eventually proceed, this amendment fails to
address the risks that ongoing litigation will result in
release of national security sensitive information, a risk
that if realized could cause grave harm to national security.
I reserve the remainder of my time on this side. I ask unanimous consent that after the Senator from Pennsylvania is recognized, the chairman of the committee be recognized for 10 minutes.
I ask unanimous consent that this letter addressed to Leader Reid from the DNI and the Attorney General be printed in the Record.
I make a very generous allotment of 12 minutes. If he needs more, I am anxious to hear what he has to say.
I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally to both sides.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
