Admin Officials Claim Surveillance Law Lapse Has Led to Gaps in Intelligence
By Paul Kiel - February 22, 2008, 5:51PM
The administration's strategy became clear yesterday: there will be no compromise. The Democrats will back down and pass the Senate's version of the surveillance bill (with retroactive immunity for the telecoms), or they will be consistently attacked for exposing the country to risk.
The strategy continued today. For the second day in a row, Republicans boycotted talks to reconcile the Senate and House versions of the surveillance bill.
And Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey got in the act, sending a letter to House intelligence committee Chair Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) that claimed that the lapse of the Protect America Act this past weekend has already had a significant impact on intelligence collection. You can read that whole letter here. They write:
"We have lost intelligence information this past week as a direct result of the uncertainty created by Congress' failure to act. Because of this uncertainty, some partners have reduced cooperation. In particular, they have delayed or refused compliance with our requests to initiate new surveillances of terrorist and other foreign intelligence targets under existing directives issued pursuant to the Protect America Act."
Democrats and experts have said that wiretapping of certain terrorist groups authorized under the Protect America Act will be good for a year. New wiretaps would be authorized under the old FISA law. But the DNI and AG are saying that the telecoms or other private sector partners in wiretapping are balking -- at least in part because it's now unclear whether they will be granted immunity for cooperating with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. They write that "most partners" are still cooperating, but they've expressed "deep misgivings."
Later on in the letter, they write that the "significant difficulties" the administration had working with the private sector due to the failure to get them immunity "have only grown since expiration of the Act without passage of the bipartisan Senate bill.... Exposing the private sector to the continued risk of billion-dollar class action suits for assisting in efforts to defend the country understandably makes the private sector much more reluctant to cooperate."
more...
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/admin_officials_claim_surveill.php