NYT Slams Bush on FISA, WashPo Minces

Our nation's papers-of-record this week both weighed in on proposed White House changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the law that regulates our government's ability to conduct electronic surveillance on its citizens.

Essentially, President Bush wants to make it easier to bypass FISA to snoop on Americans without warrants. He'd also like to shield from prosecution telecoms such as Verizon and AT&T that cooperate with intelligence agencies in a manner that calls to mind dogs rolling over to get their tummies rubbed.

Both papers, naturally, disapproved of the measure. But they struck very different tones in their editorials. Herewith, a few strong passages from the NYT, which, although guilty of employing a hack journalist (Judy Miller) who helped make the case for war in Iraq, has cast a much more trenchant eye on the Bush administration:

"For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program.

Suddenly, Mr. Bush is in a hurry. He has submitted a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping. It would undermine the fundamental constitutional principle — over which there can be no negotiation or compromise — that the government must seek an individual warrant before spying on an American or someone living here legally....

This is a dishonest measure, dishonestly presented, and Congress should reject it. Before making any new laws, Congress has to get to the truth about Mr. Bush's spying program....

With clear answers — rather than fearmongering and stonewalling — there can finally be a real debate about amending FISA. It's not clear whether that can happen under this president. Mr. Bush long ago lost all credibility in the area where this law lies: at the fulcrum of the balance between national security and civil liberties."

And now, for purposes of comparison, some material from the Washington Post editorial page, which beat the drum steadily for war and has yet to provide an adequate explanation for its lack of skepticism (note the rhetorical question at the end):

"TECHNOLOGY and the nature of threats to U.S. security have both changed enormously since Congress in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which governs intelligence agencies' ability to conduct electronic surveillance in the United States. The law has been amended repeatedly since then, including after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but it's reasonable to think that another overhaul might be in order. For one, the law could be read to impose the burdensome requirement of preparing a warrant and obtaining court approval to intercept phone calls or e-mails that begin and end entirely outside the United States but that, by technological happenstance, are routed through the United States. Everyone from civil liberties groups to spymasters seems to agree that this is silly. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) have proposed workable remedies for this unintended glitch.

The Bush administration, however, is seeking far broader changes in the law -- on which we would urge Congress to proceed with extreme caution. The administration says that it simply wants to modernize the law to make it "technologically neutral," applying equally to communications that take place through the air and by wire. Sounds sensible, but the administration proposes to deal with that problem in a way that could dangerously expand the scope of surveillance that the government could engage in free from court oversight....

Perhaps a more accommodating, updated FISA would encourage the administration to follow the law rather than circumvent it, but the administration's testimony before the Senate intelligence committee last week on that subject was hardly reassuring. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) asked if the administration had "any plans to do any surveillance" outside of FISA. "None that we are formulating or thinking about currently," replied the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. "But I'd just highlight, Article II is Article II, so in a different circumstance, I can't speak for the president what he might decide." With answers like this, how can lawmakers trying to fix this statute have any confidence the administration will live by the rules Congress lays out?"

Winner: NYT