Congress on Wednesday cleared a federal wiretapping bill that has all the ingredients needed to meet the approval of President Bush, including retroactive immunity for telecom companies that helped the government eavesdrop after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The bill passed easily in the Senate, 69-28, and included the support of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who had earlier promised not to vote for such a bill because of the immunity language.
Obama was one of just 21 Democrats to back the bill. His former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., voted no on the measure, and even some of Obama’s staunchest Senate allies — Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Kerry, D-Mass. — voted against it.
Obama did not talk to reporters following his vote, but said recently that terrorist threats made passage of the bill “too important to delay.”
Passage of the bill gave Bush a victory in a standoff with the Democrat-led Congress that began last August. Democrats attempted several times this year to pass far more restrictive surveillance legislation that did not include immunity.
Bush said Wednesday the bill was “long overdue” and its passage showed “that even in an election year, we can come together and get important pieces of legislation passed.”
The bill updates the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs the way U.S. intelligence officers intercept calls and read e-mails from outside the United States to domestic recipients.
Under the legislation, special courts will be permitted to approve warrants for the government to cast a wide surveillance net instead of targeting one suspect at a time.
“Now that could mean millions upon millions of communications between innocent Americans and their friends, families or business associates overseas could now be legally collected,” said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who voted against the bill.
The Senate voted down three Democratic amendments to the bill, one of which would have stripped the retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies, which are facing dozens of lawsuits over their role helping the government eavesdrop.
“If the administration gets its wish, which is passage of this bill,” Leahy said, “there will likely be no conclusive judgment on the lawfulness of the president’s [eavesdropping] program … and thus no accountability.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who voted for the bill, said lawsuits against the telecommunications companies would be unfair.
“Any company who assisted us following the attacks of Sept. 11 deserves a round of applause and a helping hand, not a slap in the face and a kick in the gut.”
