GOP Opposes Attempt To Revise Wiretap Law

Democrats Propose New Requirements

A House Democratic effort to revise the nation's new foreign intelligence surveillance law met swift resistance yesterday from the White House, Republican lawmakers and even some party members.

The GOP leaders of both chambers said the bill introduced yesterday by the chairmen of the House intelligence and Judiciary committees seeks to impose restrictions that would impede intelligence and law enforcement efforts to prevent a terrorist attack.

Meanwhile, Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House intelligence panel, and a handful of other Democrats introduced a competing bill that would impose even more surveillance restrictions than those endorsed by the committee leaders.

The Democratic chairmen said their bill is an attempt to fix the temporary Protect America Act, which was passed under White House pressure in August with a February expiration date. The Bush administration wants to make the act permanent.

Like that law, the chairmen's legislation would expand the government's ability to intercept the communications of intelligence targets overseas. It would do so by allowing officials to request from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court a blanket warrant for a foreign target: a person, group, cell or government of interest to an intelligence investigation.

But unlike the Protect America Act, the bill would require court approval for the procedures to be used by the government in selecting those who would be subject to surveillance, as well as the procedures to be used to minimize or protect the information derived from U.S. citizens' calls and e-mails that are inadvertently intercepted. It would also require court approval for the guidelines by which the government obtains a warrant to wiretap a person in the United States.

"This legislation provides the intelligence community with strong tools to track down terrorists, weapons proliferators and spies," said intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), who co-sponsored the bill with Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). "But it also protects the civil liberties of Americans and requires stronger oversight."

"It looks like the legislation is a step backwards from the Protect America Act," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. The White House and House GOP leaders criticized the bill in part for not providing immunity for telecommunications firms that have been sued for allegedly violating people's rights in connection with the government's surveillance effort.

Caroline Fredrikson, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Democratic chairmen's bill improves on the Protect America Act but contains "one major flaw." The measure, she said in a statement, "still allows for the U.S. government to collect phone calls and emails from Americans without an individual warrant."

Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.