Voter jitters about the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are breathing new life into support for the embattled National Security Agency, Republican hawks argue.
Some Republicans have recently joined with Democrats to curb the spy agency’s reach in the wake of revelations about the extent of its eavesdropping programs.
But Republicans who are more supportive of foreign intervention tell the Washington Examiner that the new terrorist threat in Iraq and Syria is changing the calculus.
“If anybody wants to dismantle the NSA now, they’re just nuts,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. “I think there’s been a wake-up call.”
The NSA has been among the country’s premier spying agencies since its 1952 founding. But the prominence — and power — of the agency increased markedly in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. U.S. national security policy pivoted from a conventional footing to focus on pre-empting the kind of asymmetrical, non-state terrorist threats that the technologically advanced NSA was uniquely qualified to track.
But as anxiety over 9/11 faded and new revelations about the agency’s domestic activities raised concerns about constitutional rights, efforts to restrain the NSA had bipartisan momentum.
In June, 135 House Republicans joined with 158 Democrats to overwhelmingly approve legislation curbing the spy agency’s monitoring of emails. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., sponsored the measure.
Americans’ concern about ISIS has altered this political dynamic, hawks say. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 91 percent believe ISIS represents a “serious” threat to the U.S.
Driving that concern is the abundance of foreign fighters who carry U.S. and other Western passports who have joined ISIS forces. Their ability to slip into the U.S. and launch a terrorist attack is viewed as a major threat by lawmakers who focus on national security issues.
“Certainly we always want to protect people’s liberties and privacy expectations. But we should not underestimate that this growing domestic threat that Europe already faces — of citizen-terrorists — is real,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who serves on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees and is mulling a run for president in 2016.
Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for Massie’s bill to pass.
Supporters say Massie’s legislation would simply eliminate funding for the NSA to conduct warrantless email searches. Opponents say it would prevent the NSA from legally monitoring communications between foreigners based in the U.S. and terrorists abroad.
But regardless of the debate, lawmakers’ lingering worry about the possibility of another terrorist attack on the homeland would have sunk it.
It passed the House easily, in a vote likely fueled by controversy over extensive news reports of NSA spying capabilities and domestic activities that were more extensive than many Americans realized. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who is in the running to become the next House Intelligence Committee chairman and voted against Massie’s proposal, said he’s observed increased levels of buyer’s remorse among Republicans as they have come to understand the ISIS threat.
Soon after the June vote on Massie’s bill, Nunes sent a letter to his Republican colleagues warning that the proposal could hamper the ability of the U.S. to track terrorists and pre-empt attacks. The Californian said that the response to his letter, with members indicating a renewed appreciation for the importance of a robust NSA, has picked up significantly since angst about ISIS escalated over the summer.
“When we talk about putting handcuffs on NSA,” Nunes said, “it will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to find the westerners fighting for ISIS who we don’t even know who they are at this point.”
Massie, however, is holding firm.
In a brief interview with the Washington Examiner, he defended his legislation. The libertarian-leaning Republican, who is affiliated with the Tea Party, said he’s detected no clamoring among the voters in his Kentucky district for him to take a more hawkish position on ISIS or foreign policy in general. Massie said he’s not worried that the rise of ISIS will derail the progress he has made in garnering support for clipping NSA operations.
“That doesn’t concern me,” he said.
Republicans have generally been more hawkish than Democrats. That position has included matters where tension exists between protecting U.S. national security and preserving civil liberties. That began to change in 2010, as the GOP’s small libertarian wing gained influence by drawing political strength from a sympathetic Tea Party contingent that prioritized adherence to the Constitution.
But Republicans have been returning to their hawkish roots in dizzying fashion, spurred by voters who appear to once again be more concerned about a foreign terrorist threat than NSA snooping. And it’s not just Republicans. Sen. Bill Nelson, a liberal Florida Democrat, said he expects a new appreciation for the NSA to emerge on Capitol Hill, and said the agency is a crucial tool in the battle against ISIS.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has perhaps his party’s most outspoken critic of the GOP trend toward isolationism and backing defense cuts in the aftermath of the unpopular Iraq war, not to mention what he views as President Obama’s weak foreign policy. But he said snapback to a stronger national security posture was inevitable for members of both parties, given the ongoing terrorist threat that was going to rear its head sooner or later.
“The doves have become hawks and that will spill over to NSA as well,” McCain said.
