Reid: The President and the Republicans Want Failure

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One of the things we’re fighting for now on FISA is to make sure the Republicans get pinned as the obstructionists here. Here was Reid’s first shot at doing so (a rough transcript of his speech, via email):

We want, if necessary, within the confines of the law, to do wiretapping of these bad people. But, Mr. President, Having said that we want to do it within the confines of our Law and our constitution. We want to make sure that this wire tapping does not include innocent Americans who just happen to be part of what they’re collecting. That’s what the American People expect us to do.

So I again say Mr. President, no one can question our patriotism, our willingness to keep our homeland safe. We have tried to move forward on this legislation. We have tried in many different ways. What we have been doing today and yesterday is moving forward on this legislation just as the distinguished Senator from California said. There are amendments that will make this legislation better. Now that’s in the eye of the beholder. We all understand that. But shouldn’t the Senate have the ability to vote on those amendments?

No matter what we do as a Senate it has to have a conference with the house. They have already passed their legislation. But we have been stalled every step of the way. Read more →

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What Ever Happened to “Upperdown Votes”?

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Say what you will about Senator Reid. But right now, he’s in a giant showdown with Mitch McConnell (and, disgustingly, Jello Jay Rockefeller), and I guarantee you’d rather have Reid win than McConnell.

The Republicans have refused to allow an "upperdown" vote on any amendment since the Leahy substitution amendment went through. They’ve called for a cloture vote to vote on the SSCI bill, with just one minor amendment. Which means, if cloture passes, we’ll get screwed by Jello Jay, and Bush will get his wet dream of a spying bill.

Reid, on the other hand, wants a fair hearing for the amendments being offered–including immunity, but also things like oversight on minimization and restrictions on wiretaps of Americans overseas. He basically wants the Senate to have a chance to improve on the work of the SSCI. And though he’s not saying it, several of these amendments, though they propose something the Administration has said would be okay, would really cause Bush to veto the bill.

The idea is cloture allows Bush to conduct his spying as he wants to, with Congressional approval. Whereas Reid wants to deliver what Bush has said he needs, rather than what he really wants but won’t admit to.

The cloture vote is scheduled for 4:30 on Monday. We’ve got three and a half days to get at least three of the following people to flip their votes from the vote on the Leahy substitution:

Bayh (202) 224-5623
Carper (202) 224-2441
Inouye (202) 224-3934
Johnson (202) 224-5842
Landrieu (202)224-5824
McCaskill (202) 224-6154
Mikulski (202) 224-4654
Nelson (FL) (202) 224-5274
Nelson (NE) (202) 224-6551
Pryor (202) 224-2353
Salazar (202) 224-5852
Specter (202) 224-4254 (What the hell–he had an amendment ignored today, too)

And to convince those Senators who want to be President that this is a vote they need to be present for. (This assumes Rockefeller won’t flip, since he’s co-sponsoring the bill with Bond.) It’s probably also a good idea to touch base with Senators DiFi (202-224-3841) and Whitehouse (202-224-2921) to make sure they remain on the side of the good.

Several years ago, when they were on the wrong side of a close Senate, Republicans insisted on the sanctity of an "upperdown vote." But now, they want to refuse that right to any legislative action save the one Bush supports.

We can win this one. And boy, Read more →

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Lying to Congress before the Torture Tapes

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This morning I suggested that one reason the CIA destroyed the torture tapes was to protect the European countries in which the interrogations took place. I then showed that Mary McCarthy, who was fired from the CIA for allegedly serving as a source for Dana Priest’s black sites article, claims that a high level CIA official (who is likely to have been involved in the torture tape destruction) lied to Congress in the lead-up to the McCain Amendment and, therefore, in the lead-up to the destruction of the terror tapes. Now, I’d like to show how the lies alleged by McCarthy coincide with Jello Jay Rockefeller’s attempts to learn more about the CIA’s torture practices (I’ve updated my torture tapes timeline accordingly).

McCarthy alleges that a senior CIA official lied to Congress on two occasions. Once, to HPSCI (and particularly Jane Harman), in February 2005.

In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends, a senior agency official failed to provide a full account of the CIA’s detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat.

And once, to staffers of (presumably) SSCI, in June 2005:

A senior CIA official, meeting with Senate staff in a secure room of the Capitol last June, promised repeatedly that the agency did not violate or seek to violate an international treaty that bars cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees, during interrogations it conducted in the Middle East and elsewhere.

While Harman has only publicly noted her written objection to the terror tape destruction in 2003, Jello Jay has outlined his attempts to exercise oversight over the CIA’s torture.

In May 2005, I wrote the CIA Inspector General requesting over a hundred documents referenced in or pertaining to his May 2004 report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation activities. Included in my letter was a request for the CIA to provide to the Senate Intelligence Committee the CIA’s Office of General Counsel report on the examination of the videotapes and whether they were in compliance with the August 2002 Department of Justice legal opinion concerning interrogation. The CIA refused to provide this and the other detention and interrogation documents to the committee as requested, despite a second written request to CIA Director Goss in September 2005. Read more →

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DiFi’s Amendment

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I raised DiFi’s rather interesting amendment to the FISA bill in this post. Now that the transcripts are up from yesterday’s debate, I’d like to fine tune what I said about the amendment.

First, I was mistaken when I told a few people that Leahy and Jello Jay were co-sponsors of DiFi’s amendment. They are co-sponsors of her exclusivity amendment, but only Bill Nelson is co-sponsor of her immunity amendment.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Nelson of Florida be added as a cosponsor of the FISA Court evaluation on the immunity question amendment.

Second, here’s what DiFi says about her reluctance to vote for the bill with immunity that doesn’t include her amendment.

I voted for telecom immunity in the committee. I am not inclined to vote for it, to be candid with you, unless this amendment is adopted.

Not an absolute commitment, particularly coming from DiFi. But a start, at least.

Now here’s her description of what her amendment says. She starts with a characterization of the immunity included in the SSCI bill:

So let me begin by talking about the immunity provision of the bill. It is not as expansive as some would make it sound. The language would only cover cases where the Attorney General certifies that the defendant companies received written requests or directives from top levels of the Government for their assistance.

In other words, the Government, in writing, I stress in writing, assured those companies that the program was legal, the President had authorized the program, and that its legality has been approved by the Attorney General.

DiFi’s first paragraph is curious. It describes immunity broadly, including "written requests" or "directives"–I can’t tell whether the "directives" here, given the context, are written or not. She further says it would cover those who got these written and possibly non-written requests from "top levels of Government," but doesn’t specify that, by law, the immunity should be restricted to those who received written requests from the AG.

That said, I’m not sure what her following paragraph means. Is it conditional, implying that companies would only get immunity if they had something in writing. Or does DiFi’s, "I stress, in writing," mean the companies did, in fact, get something in writing? Also, her second paragraph seems to imply that only those who got authorization beforehand from the AG would qualify for immunity, which is different from what her first paragraph says. Read more →

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Dick versus Scottish Haggis: The Grudge Match

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Arlen "Scottish Haggis" Specter took the opportunity yesterday to enter a letter exchange he had with Dick Cheney into the Congressional Record. Here’s that exchange (see below the letters for my analysis; h/t for Selise to alerting me the transcripts were up):

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,

Washington, DC, June 7, 2006.
Hon. Richard B. Cheney,
The Vice President,
Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Vice President: I am taking this unusual step in writing to you to establish a public record. It is neither pleasant nor easy to raise these issues with the Administration of my own party, but I do so because of their importance,

No one has been more supportive of a strong national defense and tough action against terrorism than I. However, the Administration’s continuing position on the NSA electronic surveillance program rejects the historical constitutional practice of judicial approval of warrants before wiretapping and denigrates the constitutional authority and responsibility of the Congress and specifically the Judiciary Committee to conduct oversight on constitutional issues.

On March 16, 2006, I introduced legislation to authorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to rule on the constitutionality of the Administration’s electronic surveillance program. Expert witnesses, including four former judges of the FISA Court, supported the legislation as an effective way to preserve the secrecy of the program and protect civil rights. The FISA Court has an unblemished record for keeping secrets and it has the obvious expertise to rule on the issue. The FISA Court judges and other experts concluded that the legislation satisfied the case-in-controversy requirement and was not a prohibited advisory opinion. Notwithstanding my repeated efforts to get the Administration’s position on this legislation, I have been unable to get any response, including a “no”. Read more →

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Why Did Reid Pull the Bill?

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This rather snotty article from the WaPo says that Reid didn’t pull the FISA bill yesterday because of Dodd’s efforts.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the decision had nothing to do with the efforts of Dodd and his allies. Indeed, for most of yesterday, Dodd appeared to be fighting a losing battle. His initial filibuster effort was steamrolled when the Senate voted 76 to 10 to take up the measure at noon.

Manley is, of course, full of shit. At the very least, Reid did the math to see that Dodd could filibuster this issue until the Christmas break, and since Reid intended to get funding done before the break, he was faced with postponing the break or punting the appropriations bills to the next year. So whatever else caused Reid to pull the bill, Dodd’s demonstration that he was willing to hold the Senate floor was one factor (apparently, Dodd only left the floor once during yesterday’s debate).

Snotty article also points to the amendments as one of the reasons Reid pulled the bill.

But in the face of more than a dozen amendments to the bill and guerrilla tactics from its opponents, Reid surprised his colleagues when he announced there would not be enough time to finish the job.

Now, best as I can count, I think I know of at least five amendments:

  1. Dodd’s amendment to pull immunity from the bill
  2. DiFi’s amendment to declare FISA the exclusive means of electronic tapping
  3. DiFi’s amendment to have the FISA Court review the authorizations the telecoms got before they received immunity
  4. [I think] A Whitehouse amendment to prohibit wiretapping of US Persons abroad
  5. [I think] A Whitehouse amendment to provide oversight of minimization
  6. Update: Beth Meacham says Leahy’s amendment–to substitute the SJC bill–came up just before Reid pulled the bill (thanks Beth).

I’ll try to clarify these later today. In addition, I’m sure there were going to be Republican amendments seeking to allow Bush to wiretap each and every Dirty Fucking Hippie and similar authoritarian fun.

Read more →

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Sheldon Whitehouse’s Speech

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Whitehouse used his time to accuse AG Mukasey and DNI McConnell of being disingenuous in their public statements on FISA. As Whitehouse points out, the key issue (for him, in that he is alright with immunity) is how the government will be permitted to spy on Americans. Here’s his speech.

Just recently, the Attorney General of the United States published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times on our ongoing work to improve the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This follows closely on a similar opinion piece by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell in the New York Times. I ask unanimous consent that each of these be entered into the Record.

Both go on at some length about the importance of new legislation on foreign surveillance activities. They devote paragraph after paragraph to this. But the two leaders of America’s law enforcement and intelligence communities completely ignore – never once mention – the issue that is actually in dispute here: on what terms will we allow this administration to spy on Americans?

The heart of our debate today is the question of spying on Americans, 1. when they are outside the country, or 2. when they are incidentally intercepted by surveillance targeted at someone else.

This – wiretapping of Americans – has been the entire subject of our work on surveillance – and Judge Mukasey and Admiral McConnell never once even mention the topic.

There are really only two possibilities here, and each is regrettable. One is that these two gentlemen simply don’t know what is going on. That seems unlikely, because Director McConnell at least has participated in hearings on the subject, where we’ve discussed in detail our concerns about wiretapping Americans, and members of my staff are working through the details of the issue on a nearly daily basis with lawyers from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice. Read more →

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The Revolt of the Spooks

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(Or Is it Civil War?)

There has been a lot of hand-wringing in this post, suggesting that the story revealing some Democratic members of the Gang of Four was a hit piece by Republicans (or, specifically, Porter Goss). That strikes me as an overly Manichean view of things, in which an article that makes Democrats look bad could only be a Republican hit piece. There’s another party in this equation–the Intelligence Community. The events of the last ten days make more sense, it seems to me, if you consider all of those events as a revolt on the part of the Intelligence Community.

Start with the release of the NIE. Pat Lang passes on the explanation that the NIE was declassified after "intelligence career seniors" threatened to leak the NIE to the press, legal consequences be damned.

The "jungle telegraph" in Washington is booming with news of the Iran NIE. I am told that the reason the conclusions of the NIE were released is that it was communicated to the White House that "intelligence career seniors were lined up to go to jail if necessary" if the document’s gist were not given to the public. Translation? Someone in that group would have gone to the media "on the record" to disclose its contents.

Dafna Linzer and Peter Baker provide the polite version–but still point to a senior intelligence officer who describes making the decision in the first person plural.

By last weekend, an intense discussion broke out about whether to keep it secret. "We knew it would leak, so honesty required that we get this out ahead, to prevent it from appearing to be cherry picking," said a top intelligence official. So McConnell reversed himself, and analysts scrambled over the weekend to draft a declassified version.

So somewhere in the ranks of the "career seniors" and the "top intelligence officials" some folks made a decision to confront Dick Cheney’s war-mongering directly. That’s a pretty serious escalation of the long-brewing conflict between Cheney and the Intelligence Community.

Then there’s the blockbuster by Mark Mazzetti (NYT’s intelligence reporter) revealing the destruction of the torture tapes. He sources it to:

current and former government officials

several officials

current and former government officials

former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue

But not Porter Goss (who would otherwise qualify as a "former government official"); Goss declined to comment through a spokesperson. And also not Michael Hayden, who wrote a letter to pre-empt Mazzetti’s story that provides a laughable party line for CIA officers to parrot. Read more →

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Trent and Mitch

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As you’ve no doubt heard, Trent Lott will announce that he has decided to spend more time with his K Street friends.

Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott(R-Miss.) is planning on resigning from the Senate this year and maymake a formal announcement as soon as today.

If he resigns, Lottwould become the sixth Republican senator to announce they werestepping down this election cycle. His term expires in 2012; and aresignation would prompt a special election to fill the remainder ofhis term.  Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) would be tasked with appointinga replacement for Lott to serve before the special election is held.

I’m glad to see Trent go (though Haley Barbour is bound to appoint someone just as awful to replace him). But I’m most intrigued by what Trent’s departure will do to Senate leadership. After all, the Republicans have actually done better in the minority than they were doing in the majority. That’s partly because Republicans just better at obnoxiously obstructing legislation than actually governing. But it’s also because Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott are masters of parliamentary procedures. So switching Bill Frist, in the majority, for McConnell and Lott, in the minority, was a significant step up for the Republicans.

Well, the Republicans may lose Lott imminently, and McConnell is facing a surprisingly tough re-election campaign in KY.

I’ve long said that I Read more →

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Madame Secretary Finally Accepts an Invitation

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Frankly, I’ve been holding my breath since I first saw this (tentatively) on Selise’s weekly hearing schedule. After all, Waxman has been trying to get Condi Rice to appear before the Oversight Committee since early spring. But they’ve now announced the hearing, so I’m breathing again.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearingentitled, “The State Department and the Iraq War” on Thursday morning,October 25, 2007, in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building.

Thehearing will examine unanswered questions regarding the performance ofthe State Department on several significant issues relating to the Iraqwar, including the impact of the activities of Blackwater USA andcorruption within the Iraqi ministries on the prospects of politicalreconciliation in Iraq. The Committee may also discuss with theSecretary allegations of wrongdoing associated with the construction ofthe new U.S. Embassy Compound in Baghdad, as well as other mattersunder investigation by the Committee.

WHO: The Honorable Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State

That said, I imagine Condi’s neatest piece of diplomacy since taking over as Secretary of State was this hearing (granted, the competition isn’t all that stiff). The Crypt reports that Condi will face a wide range of questions.

Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight andGoverment Reform Committee Read more →

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