Chris Dodd’s Speech on FISA Debate
Here is part of Chris Dodd’s speech in the FISA debate. It is not a perfector an official transcript and should not be used as such. I was typing fast and have surely made a few errors. In some cases I summarized what he was saying and in other places omtted some of his comments. There was much that he said about the bill and the adminisrtation before these remarks, but these reflect a key point - if they did nothing wrong, then why do they need immunity.
Any updates to his speech I will I will post them as comments.
For this Executive Branch, secrecy is power…we see a pattern of secrecy stretching back to the first months of this administration…It’s push for immunity is no different, secrecy is at its center. And tellingly the administration’s original immunity proposal protected not just the telecoms, but everyone involved in the wiretapping program…In their original proposal they wanted to immunize themselves. Think about that.
They speak to their fear and perhaps their guilt. Their guilt that they have broken the law. Their fear that in the years to come, they would be found liable or convicted. They knew better than anyone else what they had done and they must have good reason to be afraid.
Thankfully, executive immunity is not part of the current bill before us, and I’m grateful for that. But the origin of immunity tells us a great deal about what’s at stake here. That it is and has always been a self-preservation bill. Otherwise, why not have the trial and get over with it. …If the president’s allies believe is what they say the corporations would win in a walk. After all look at the thing from their perspective. In their telling, when our biggest telecom corporations help the president spy without a warrant they were doing their patriotic duty. When the listend to the executive branch and turned over private information the were doing their patriotic duty. When one company gave NSA a secret eavesdropping room in its own corp. headquarters it was simply doing its patriotic duty. When the president asked, the telecoms answered, “Well shouldn’t that be easy to prove Mr. President? The corporations only need to show a judge the authority and the assurances they were given and they’ll be in and out of court in five minutes. But if the telecoms are as defensible as the President says why doesn’t the president let them defend themselves? If their case is so easy to make, why doesn’t he let them make it? Why is he standing in the way?
Our federal court system has dealt for decades with the most delicate national security matters, building up expertise in protecting classified information behind closed doors…We can expect no less in these cases I would add, and if we’re worried about national security being threatened as a result, we can simply get the principals a security clearance.
A federal judge has already ruled that these proceedings can take place without compromising national security. (Very summarized here.)
Dodd: Quoting Judge Walker on on his ruling regarding compromising national security in court — “The state’s secret privilege still has its limits. When the court recognizes and respects the executive’s constitutional duty to protect the nation from threats, the court also takes seriously it’s constitutional duty to ajudicate the disputes that come before it. To defer to a blanket assertion of secrecy here would be to abdicate that duty, particularly because the very subject matter of this litigation has been so publicly aired…but dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice for no apparent enhancement of security.”
Dodd continues: Cooperation in warranted wiretapping is not at stake today. Collusion in warrantless wiretapping is. And the warrant makes all the difference. Because it is precisely the court’s blessing that brings presidential power under the Rule of Law. In sum, we know that giving the telecoms their day in court and giving the people their day in court would not jeopardize one ounce of our security and it could only expose one’s secrets — the extent of our president’s lawbreaking and the extent of his corporations complicity. And that our president will go to the mat to defend that he will keep from the light of the courtroom at all costs…Will George Bush’s secret die with his presidency or will it be open to the generations to come?
Dodd continues: I’m here because…I will not see those secrets go quietly into the good night…as Donald Rumsfeld and alberto Gonzales, VP Cheney, and President Bush. I’m here because the truth is not their private property. It belongs to everyone of us and it demands to be heard. State secrets, patritotic duty.
Dodd now quoting Mike McConnell: “If you play out the suits at the value of their claim it would bankrupt these companies, so we have to provide liability protection to these private secret entities.”
McConnell is becoming an accidental truth teller. Notice how how the president’s DNI concedes that if the cases went the telecoms would come to trial they would lose. I don’t know if that’s true at all mr. president, but we can thank Adm McConnell for telling us how he really feels. It’s an exaggeration that these companies would actually go bankrupt…they are the wealthiest most successful companies in America.
Dodd continues: The point has never been to cripple these companies, but to bring back checks and balances back to domestic spying. Setting that precedent would hardly require a crippling judgment.