Patrick Philbin

SJC will meet on Wednesday to take up SSCI’s FISA Amendment. We’ll get to see whether the Administration has sufficiently satisfied Scottish Haggis and Patrick Leahy to get the bill through committee with the telecom immunity still attached.

But there may be other reason to tune in, something I noticed on Selise’s weekly Congressional hearing schedule:

Panel I:

Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General, NationalSecurity, Division, U.S. Department of Justice

Panel II:

Edward Black, President and CEO, Computer & CommunicationsIndustry Association, Washington, DC

Patrick F. Philbin, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis, Washington,DC

Morton H. Halperin, Director of U.S. Advocacy, Open SocietyInstitute, Washington, DC [my emphasis]

Patrick Philbin will testify. They’re bringing in the last of the major participants in the hospital confrontation, which means we may well get one more version of how the White House bypassed DOJ–and the legal means of authorizing wiretapping–and had Alberto Gonzales authorize the wiretapping program himself.

Hopefully, Philbin will also explain how David Addington intervened to make sure Philbin was not promoted, all because he upheld the rule of law. That might be a really pointed way to show that the telecoms’ participation in the wiretap program–in spite of the absence of AG authorization–did have consequences.