After President Bush’s regular morning intelligence briefing Aug. 2, he told his top spy to take the lead in persuading Congress to modernize the law that regulates government eavesdropping.
“The president told him not to agree to anything that did not meet his goals of protecting the American people,” a U.S. intelligence source told The Examiner on Wednesday.
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That presidential edict sent Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, on a wild political ride that had Democrats accusing him of going back on a deal and Republicans crediting him for a legislative victory.
“It is horrible what the Democrats are saying about McConnell,” Michigan’s Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Examiner. “There was no double-dealing.”
The drama unfolded last week as Republican lawmakers and the White House decided to make the modernization of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act a war-on-terrorism litmus test for Democrats for Congress’ month-long recess. The National Security Agency has free rein to intercept communications of people overseas. But when such calls or e-mails are routed through the U.S., FISA forces the administration to first obtain a judge’s warrant.
An intelligence officer said there have been cases in Iraq in which terrorist hunters have had to wait days before the government could read targeted e-mails.
McConnell, a retired Navy admiral and career intelligence officer not accustomed to Capitol Hill brawls, encountered his first skirmish Friday.
After Senate Democrats claimed he supported their bill, the intelligence director was drawn into the fray, posting on his agency’s Web site a rejection of the bill pushed by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
“I cannot support this proposal,” McConnell said bluntly. With that, the administration’s legislation passed the Senate on a 60-28 vote.
The battle then moved to the House side with a rare Saturday session. “The conversations [McConnell] had, he indicated that our bill strengthened the security of this country,” Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., said during the House debate. “But after a conversation with the White House, that was withdrawn, and now we end up with a bill that does not protect our civil liberties.”
But McConnell denied he had ever agreed to support the Democratic bill, and administration officials said talks between McConnell and Democrats never progressed beyond preliminary discussions.
The House eventually approved the Senate bill. Rather than requiring an immediate warrant, the new law allows the NSA to collect phone and e-mail communications once the intelligence director and attorney general certify they believe the target is located overseas, not in this country.
