A memo drafted by House Intelligence Committee Republicans about alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse is yielding unusual party unity, even among lawmakers who routinely rebel against party leaders on surveillance policy.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Silicon Valley Democrat who has led efforts to end various types of “backdoor searches” under FISA, told the Washington Examiner she read the memo, but does not want it released.
“It was not a long memo,” she said. “It was crafted in a way that would create a misimpression based on classified information that I’ve reviewed long ago and cites sources that are highly classified.”
Lofgren said releasing the memo, which a large number of House Republicans demand under the popular Twitter hashtag #releasethememo, would set up a secondary fight over its highly classified underpinnings.
“I can’t talk about this memo, but I think – critical as I’ve been about a lack of a warrant requirement [for domestic communications under FISA] – there still are things that shouldn’t be published. We have spies, they have spies. To think every single thing that has been done by intelligence agencies should be published, I think, is incorrect,” she said.
Lofgren’s stance puts her at odds with some of her longtime Republican allies on reforming FISA, and in line with the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who said the memo is “rife with factual inaccuracies.” Another committee Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn, called it an “outrageous memo” that was “done to fuel you know, mouth breathers like Sean Hannity.”
Many Democrats not serving on the intelligence committee haven’t read the memo, despite increasingly broad readership among Republicans.
The memo presumably relates to the FBI’s probe of possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia and comes less than a month after a bipartisan coalition of party leaders and largely centrist lawmakers reauthorized Section 702 of FISA without major changes.
Lofgren, who does not serve on the intelligence committee, said she read the memo in a secure room of the Capitol complex after a Republican lawmaker mentioned it to her on the House floor.
Lofgren said she’s concerned about allegations that Twitter “bots” potentially associated with Russia may have shared the #releasethememo hashtag.
If the memo was released, “then there would have to be release of more highly sensitive information. Maybe that’s what the Russians want,” she said.
Lofgren’s longtime Republican partners on seeking to limit FISA’s potential for domestic surveillance, including Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Ted Poe, R-Texas, differ with her.
Amash, an active social media user who led the first major surveillance-reform effort after Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks – the unsuccessful so-called Amash amendment to end automatic bulk collection of domestic call records – has been conspicuously quiet. He has not tweeted the hashtag #releasethememo, but spokesperson Corie Whalen said he supports release.
“Yes,” Whalen said in one-word answer.
Poe, with whom Lofgren co-chairs the Fourth Amendment Caucus, has been more active with lobbying on Twitter. “The @TheJusticeDept opposes release of the memo w/o their permission. They don’t want the public to know what’s in it. This is exactly why the memo should be released,” Poe wrote Thursday.
Lofgren, whose Lofgren-Massie amendment to end two types of “backdoor searches” – banning government-mandated security flaws and banning warrantless searches for domestic communications “incidentally” taken under Section 702 of FISA – passed the House twice under President Obama but never became law, said the memo “doesn’t look like a nonpartisan effort to me.”
“What we have done on NSA reform has been completely bipartisan. It was the Lofgren-Massie and then the Massie-Lofgren amendment. It was Ted Poe and I co-chairing the Fourth Amendment Caucus. It doesn’t feel like that at all,” she said. (Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said in a Facebook post that release of the memo and supporting documents was “imperative.”)
Other House Democrats critical of U.S. surveillance practices have denounced the Republican memo push.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., who as a state legislator sponsored successful legislation to forbid cooperation with the National Security Agency on alleged abuses, tweeted his doubts about the memo.
Referring to Senate intelligence committee members reportedly not receiving a copy, Lieu tweeted: “Senate Intel Chairman has access to the underlying classified information upon which the partisan GOP House Intel memo is allegedly based. So does the Department of Justice. That’s why [House intelligence committee chairman Devin] Nunes doesn’t want them to see the memo. He’s worried they are going to say his memo is wrong.”
Lieu had not personally read the memo as of Wednesday afternoon, a Democratic congressional source said.
Although President Trump has the authority to declassify the document, he has not done so. Members of Congress have the constitutional right to release classified documents without consequence, but none has committed to doing so. Lofgren said unilateral release by a lawmaker may be difficult, as members are supervised by committee staff while reading the memo and aren’t allowed to keep a copy.
The Justice Department said Wednesday that it “would be extraordinarily reckless” for the House committee to release the document without ”giving the Department and the FBI the opportunity to review the memorandum.”
A House intelligence committee source told the Washington Examiner on Thursday that the committee may vote next week or the following week on whether to release the document. The committee foresees a committee vote opening a five-day window for Trump to object to release.
“If he doesn’t object, we can [publish]. If he objects, we can refer it for a vote of the full House,” they said.
