Leahy, Specter to See WH Surveillance Documents
After a year of stonewalling and multiple subpoenas, The White House has said it will allow Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter, Chairman and Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee respectively, access to the documents related to the Bush administration’s spying programs.
The White House will allow leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee to access documents on the Bush administration’s secret spying program, in an effort to win their support for retroactive legal protections covering the telecommunications firms that participated in the program, Democrats said Thursday.
Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) have demanded to see the documents before they consider a controversial foreign-intelligence surveillance bill that would grant the companies retroactive immunity. The White House has so far provided the documents only to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which last week approved a bill to overhaul the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by a 13-2 vote. The measure has been referred to Judiciary, but no date for a markup has been set yet.
A White House official told Leahy in a phone call Thursday morning that he and Specter could access the confidential documents that outline the involvement of the telecom firms. But according to an aide, the details on how the documents could be accessed have not been worked out. There also is no sign yet that the rest of the Judiciary Committee or Senate leadership may access the documents.
Telephone companies are facing about 40 lawsuits for providing private information to the government, and the Bush administration is trying to wipe away those suits by arguing that the companies acted in the interest of national security. But critics of the language say that if telephone companies and the Bush administration did nothing illegal, then they should not be absolved from litigation. For over a year, Democrats have clamored for the documents explaining why immunity would be needed, only to meet resistance from the White House.
This by no means the standoff is over. Other members of the Judiciary Committee are going to demand access to the information, or so they say, before casting a vote on the legislation Bush is demanding. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) has already said no documents, no vote.
I would like to know what happened before I absolve anyone from liability from the law. Naturally, I can’t cast an informed vote on FISA until I know the circumstances.
Furthermore, the administration has told lie after lie on this issue (and on virtually everything else), so my question is, how will Leahy, Specter and others know they will receive full disclosure? Unless they somehow force the Office of Legal Counsel to swear and affirm full disclosure Dick Cheney and David Addington may have a plethora of related items in Cheney’s safe.
Why didn’t Bush just do this a year ago?
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