How the Bush administration played politics with FISA

Dec. 4, 2007 | Editor's note: With just three weeks left before the Christmas recess, Congress has a lot to take care of -- including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which contains recent amendments that expire on Jan. 31, 2008. The last time FISA was on the agenda, this past summer, Congress ended up passing what many said was a deeply flawed, albeit temporary, piece of legislation, which granted even more spying powers than the Bush administration had sought. Documents recently released as the result of a Freedom of Information Act suit initiated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation now suggest the Bush administration was fighting dirty.

One letter, from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, alleges that the director of intelligence, Adm. Mike McConnell, reached a compromise with the Democratic leadership on Aug. 2, only to break the agreement later that night. "Either the negotiations were not carried out in good faith," Rockefeller writes to McConnell, "or the agreement you had reached [with us] ... had been overturned by pressure from the White House." Another letter, from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., suggests that McConnell deliberately waited until the end of the legislative session to submit his final draft of FISA, hoping to exploit the supposed urgency of this matter of national security. "It appears the bill was slow-walked in your shop for 16 days -- during which period the urgency expressed in the final week on the Senate floor, and by you in press releases, would presumably have been as real as it was in the final week," Whitehouse writes.

Portions of Rockefeller's letter appear below and on the following two pages. Whitehouse's letter appears in full on page four. The entire collection of documents released to the EFF can be downloaded in two parts here: Part 1, Part 2.