|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
September 14th, 2006 - Panel in
Senate Backs Bush Plan for Eavesdropping |
|
Panel in Senate Backs Bush
Plan for Eavesdropping By Eric Lichtblau and Kate Zernike New York Times September 14, 2006 Washington, Sept. 13 - The
White House took a critical step on Wednesday in its effort to get
Congressional blessing for President Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program,
but it ran into increasingly fierce resistance from leading Republicans over
its plan to try terror suspects being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The mixed results signaled
the tough road the White House faces in trying to sell the two key planks in
its national security agenda to sometimes skeptical Congressional Republicans
less than two months before the midterm elections. Democrats have allowed
Republicans to fight among themselves over the issues, and appear willing to
allow the issues to come to a vote rather than risk charges of political
obstructionism in an election season. The White House has turned
its focus to Capitol Hill as part of a broad push to shift the public debate
toward national security and away from Iraq. After kicking off the campaign
in a series of recent speeches, Mr. Bush is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill
on Thursday morning to rally support for his proposals. On the domestic
eavesdropping program, strong White House lobbying began to pay dividends on
Wednesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee approved on a party-line vote two
legislative approaches favored by the White House, along with a third the
Bush administration opposes. The program would allow the National Security
Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant on the international phone calls and
e-mail of people in the United States. But negotiations between
Capitol Hill and the White House broke down as three Republican senators
crucial to passage of the legislation hardened their stance against a White
House plan that would reinterpret a main provision of the Geneva Conventions. Senator John W. Warner,
Republican of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said
the committee would vote Thursday in a closed session on an alternative that
he and his two chief allies - Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and
John McCain of Arizona - have championed, even if the White House refuses to
go along with them. The senators have said changes to the American
interpretation of the provision of the Geneva Conventions, known as Common
Article 3, would undermine the nation’s international credibility and open
the way for other countries to treat captured American troops at their whim. “This is not about November
2006. It is not about your election. It is about those who take risks to
defend America,” Mr. Graham said. The administration pushed
back, convening a conference call in which John D. Negroponte, the director
of national intelligence, described the Senate alternative as unacceptable.
Mr. Negroponte said the plan would impose intolerable limits on any
interrogation methods American intelligence officers might use against future
terror suspects held by the Central Intelligence Agency in secret overseas
prisons. Dan Bartlett, a senior aide
to Mr. Bush, said the dispute with the Senate Republicans “may require us to
go our different ways for now and try to come back in conference.” The House appears on track
to endorse the White House proposal, with the House Armed Services Committee
voting overwhelmingly on Wednesday in favor of a bill that looks much like
the president’s. The White House political
strategy in the past week has been twofold: first, putting Mr. Bush in the
public spotlight with a string of national security speeches, and now, trying
to put Democrats in a box by forcing them to take a stand and vote on Mr. Bush’s
authority to run two of his most controversial antiterror programs. But Senators Warner, McCain
and Graham appeared to be providing cover for the Democrats, allowing them to
stay on the sidelines while the three senators, respected Republicans with distinguished
military records, take on the White House. “We think that this is a
sincere effort, based on principle, by Senators Warner, McCain and Graham, to
come up with the best legislation they can,” said Senator Jack Reed, Democrat
of Rhode Island and a member of the Armed Services Committee. Asked whether Democrats were
worried that the Republicans might yield to the White House, Mr. Reed said:
“I haven’t seen any evidence of that yet. What I’ve seen is that they’re
approaching this looking at the substance, not just over weeks and months,
but what’s in the best interests of the United States, what’s in the best
interests of American military personnel who might years from now be held.” Senator John Cornyn,
Republican of Texas, has been pushing the administration’s point of view, and
Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, has said he may bring
the president’s legislation to the floor, rather than the one backed by the
three senators. Mr. Warner and his allies
have warned that if that happens, they will introduce amendments to make the
president’s legislation look like theirs. The senators have military leaders
on their side, and in a letter sent to the Armed Services Committee on
Thursday, 27 retired military leaders urged Congress to reject the White
House proposal to reinterpret the definition of Common Article 3. The letter said the proposal
“poses a grave threat to American service members, now and in future wars,”
noting that American troops are now deployed in areas where the article is
their only source of protection if they are captured. “If degradation,
humiliation, physical and mental brutalization of prisoners is decriminalized
or considered permissible under a restrictive interpretation of Common
Article 3,’’ the letter warned, “we will forfeit all credible objections
should such barbaric practices be inflicted upon American prisoners.” The administration had also
faced resistance over the N.S.A. wiretapping program. The Democrats had
bottled up the administration’s proposals, saying Congress was being forced
to legislate “in the dark” about a secret program that few members had been
briefed on. They have repeatedly used procedural maneuvers to block the
proposals from coming to a vote in the Judiciary Committee, drawing
accusations of obstructionism from Republicans. But Democrats, who appeared
to realize the risk of being accused of thwarting debate on national security
matters, did not stand in the way of the committee vote on Wednesday. With Republicans united in
support, the panel approved on a 10-to-8 vote a hotly debated plan drawn in
negotiations with the White House by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania,
the committee chairman. The plan would allow a secret court to rule on the
constitutionality of the wiretapping program. It would also implicitly
recognize the president’s constitutional authority to gather foreign
intelligence, a concession Democrats and civil rights advocates contend would
expand the president’s authority to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant. The panel also approved a
proposal by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, that would require the
administration to notify Congress when it conducted wiretaps without a
warrant. Democrats claimed a partial
victory on the wiretapping issue when they won Judiciary Committee approval
of another measure that could effectively ban the security agency’s
eavesdropping program. That plan, drafted by
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, would affirm that the
foreign intelligence law passed by Congress in 1978, requiring court approval
for eavesdropping, as the “exclusive” means of authorizing wiretaps in the
United States against suspected terrorists and spies. Democrats succeeded in
getting two Republican moderates, Mr. Specter and Mr. Graham, both of whom
had voiced concerns over the legal aspects of the wiretapping program, to
vote in favor of the proposal and send it to the full Senate. That set the stage for the
unusual spectacle of the Judiciary Committee - and its chairman - supporting
two proposals that many lawmakers said would effectively nullify each other
if passed. Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed
reporting. Copyright 2006 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/washington/14capital.html |