Counterterrorism Blog

As a follow-up and partial rebuttal to Dennis Lormel's post on the need for a new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), I invite readers to review recent public statements and testimony by leading counter-terrorism officials in the Bush Administration. Review the public remarks by Deputy NSC Advisor for Combating Terrorism Juan Zarate yesterday at the Washington Institute; review the testimony by Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes Daniel Glaser last week at a hearing on Iran; review the recent speech by FBI Director Robert Mueller in England on global terrorism today and the challenges we face. Review everything you can find spoken or written by senior Administration counter-terrorism officials in the past three months, and please find me ONE clear example of the harm being done to counter-terrorism investigations as a result of the political stalemate over FISA. I was at the Washington Institute yesterday, and aside from the very brief mention of the bill, there was nothing noted on the reason for the bill to be passed right now. Having worked in Washington for over 25 years, I know, as sure as the sun rises and sets, that if there were just one such example of a failed investigation or case that had to be dropped because of the lack of a permanent FISA, that it would have been leaked to the press.

I'm not saying a reformed and permanent FISA is unnecessary; far from it. But the Administration has been unable to provoke the least bit of public concern over the law. When I asked DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff last month whether DHS investigative operations have been harmed, he said that as a "consumer" of FISA-initiated information and not a "producer," he could not say one way or another. That doesn't sound anything like "We have a major interruption of intelligence information and we lost track with 5 suspected terrorists plotting to blow up something." As it stands now, the case for FISA is a big yawner for 95% of the American public. That's not Congress' fault.

UPDATE, April 25: I have two responses to Jeff Breinholt's rebuttal to my post. First, to the best of my knowledge, no Administration official has cited the risk to classified information as a reason for the silence to date To the examples noted above, I would add a C-SPAN interview on March 9 with WH Homeland Security Advisor Kenneth Wainstein, in which he also didn't cite a case in which the stalemate has damaged investigations.

Second, I would note that the person who could declassify enough information to talk about such a case is President Bush, and he already did that once. On February 9, 2006, he openly discussed Al Qaeda's plot to hijack a plane and fly into the tallest building on the West Coast, a tower in Los Angeles. Now, I will concede that such a disclosure can raise many questions, as indicated in Zachary Abuza's skeptical reaction in 2006 to the President's disclosure. But that's not an insurmountable problem if the White House wants to generate public support for the bill.

I agree with Jeff that the immunity issue is the hangup now. But that, in large part, is because the majority of Americans don't care enough about the bill to push the parties into a final resolution on immunity.