To: combjelly who wrote (371328 ) 2/21/2008 6:50:11 AM From: Brumar89 Read Replies (1) | Respond to If liberals won’t believe what a Republican says about the terrorist wiretap bill, maybe they’ll believe liberal Democrat Jay Rockefeller: The House left town last week for two weeks letting the wiretap laws expire because Pelosi and many of the House Democrats oppose granting immunity to telecom companies for cooperating with the government to wiretap possible terrorists abroad. This despite the Senate Democrats who passed a bill giving those companies immunity and what the Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell has testified. This is not some partisan power play by the administration, but is backed by Democrat Jay Rockefeller. And McConnell directed the NSA under Bill Clinton and has never been regarded as a partisan fearmonger. As the Wall Street Journal writes today, Rockefeller, a Democrat, on the Senate floor last week: "What people have to understand around here is that the quality of the intelligence we are going to be receiving is going to be degraded. It is going to be degraded. It is already going to be degraded as telecommunications companies lose interest." Intelligence-gathering has changed since the end of the Cold War. We live in a world of fiber optics and packet switching. The National Security Administration can't get what it needs merely by scanning the airwaves for telephone calls and code words. Terrorists communicate through the Internet. To eavesdrop on those communications, the NSA needs the help of private companies, which voluntarily cooperated after 9/11 when Mr. Bush and the Attorney General asked them to do so.As Mr. Rockefeller put it last week, "What is the big payoff for the telephone companies? They get paid a lot of money? No. They get paid nothing. What do they get for this? They get $40 billion worth of suits, grief, trashing, but they do it. But they don't have to do it, because they do have shareholders to respond to, to answer to." What is the result of the Pelosi position? We will not have the same ability to gather intelligence that we would have had if they'd passed the Senate version of the law. Reyes claims that existing wiretap orders can stay in place for a year. But that doesn't account for new targets , which may require new kinds of telecom cooperation and thus a new court order. Mr. Reyes can make all the assertions he wants about immunity, but they are no defense against a lawsuit. For that matter, without a statute in place, even a renewed order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is likely to be challenged as illegitimate. A telecom CEO who cooperates without a court order is all but guaranteed to get not merely a wiretap lawsuit, but also a shareholder suit for putting the company at legal risk. 66 trial lawyers representing plaintiffs in the telecommunications suits have contributed $1.5 million to Democratic senators and causes. Of the 29 Democratic senators who voted against the FISA bill last Tuesday, 24 took money from the trial lawyers (as did two absent senators, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama). Eric A. Isaacson of San Diego, one of the telecommunications plaintiffs' lawyers, contributed to the recent unsuccessful presidential campaign of Sen. Chris Dodd, who led the Senate fight against the bill containing immunity. Barack Obama came back to the Senate to vote against the bill. Hillary Clinton skipped out on the vote, but does anyone doubt that she would have bucked the party's liberal wing in the middle of her nomination battle against Obama? The WSJ is correct that this is an opportunity for John McCain to lead the fight against the Democrats who opposed this bill. It has the perfect combination for him - the war against terrorism and the possible influence of outside money influencing policy choices.betsyspage.blogspot.com
