More Wrangling Over the NSA Surveillance Program
On the same day that Pat Roberts indicated he was satisfied for now that the Administration was willing to negotiate an updated FISA, thus declining to hold hearings in the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence, Representatives in the House apparently agreed to move forward with their hearing, though the scope is in dispute:
Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that they had agreed to open a Congressional inquiry prompted by the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program. But a dispute immediately broke out among committee Republicans over the scope of the inquiry.
Representative Heather A. Wilson, the New Mexico Republican and committee member who called last week for the investigation, said the review “will have multiple avenues, because we want to completely understand the program and move forward.”
But an aide to Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who leads the committee, said the inquiry would be much more limited in scope, focusing on whether federal surveillance laws needed to be changed and not on the eavesdropping program itself.
In a move that has irked Arlen Specter, who calls it ‘window dressing oversight’, the movement for now appears to be towards a proposal by Mike Dewine:
The White House is unlikely to agree to bring the wiretapping under the scope of the FISA court, as most Democrats and some Republicans want. Instead, the administration appears interested in a proposal by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, that would explicitly authorize the wiretapping, without court warrants, but create small Congressional subcommittees to oversee it.
Mr. DeWine said that Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, called him Wednesday, on the eve of the expected Intelligence Committee vote, to talk about his legislation, and the White House indicated some support for it.
My personal goal all along has been to make the program explicitly legal…it appears, though the critics will howl bloody murder, that the goal is almost in reach…
House to Hold Inquiry on NSA Surveillance
NY Times
Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that they had agreed to open a Congressional inquiry prompted by the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program. But a dispute immediately broke out among committee Rep…