The Intelligence Bill Should Not Be Held Hostage by Politics

By Dennis Lormel

The Senate did the right thing early last week and put politics aside. They passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This legislation would have given the intelligence community broad authority to monitor telecommunications of suspected terrorists. Since having been named Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Mike McConnell has repeatedly stated that the intelligence community requires the broad collection and monitoring capabilities provided under the Senate legislation.

Disappointingly, The House of Representatives couldn’t get past politics and allowed the existing temporary legislation to lapse. House leaders, who let the FISA bill expire, strongly disagreed with Mr. McConnell’s assessment that not enacting FISA legislation weakened national security, thereby placing us at greater risk to terrorism. They opined that ongoing intelligence monitoring would not be affected, and therefore, we are at no greater risk. What they neglected to address was that intelligence collection and development is a 24/7 process. What this means is that newly developed intelligence information and identification of potential terrorists cannot be acted upon with the sense of urgency or time sensitivity required. Hence, we are at greater risk.

It’s unfortunate that certain House leaders chose to be disingenuous and allowed politics to override doing the right thing. In so doing, they have diminished our national security in spite of their assertions to the contrary. Every day they delay passage of the bill they make the job of the intelligence community more difficult to achieve.

An issue at the center of the debate is immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government. The actions of the telecommunications companies were to provide information to safeguard us from terrorism. They fully deserve immunity and our gratitude for their spirit of cooperation. Instead, they find themselves in the precarious position of being subjects of lawsuits for cooperating with the government.

If telecommunications companies do not receive immunity, it will send a chilling message to the entire private sector. The stark reality will be that companies will be forced into a position of resisting to cooperate with the government out of fear of being subject to litigation. For example, there are a number of ways the financial sector cooperated with the government following 9/11. Such cooperation was tremendously helpful in terrorist financing cases. Similar cooperation in the future would be unlikely with the precedent of the telecommunications lawsuits.

Congress accepted the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and empowered the DNI. It is incumbent Congress provide the DNI with the tools necessary to safeguard our national security. It’s time to put politics aside and do the right thing.

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