House Passes Compromise Wiretapping Bill

Bush said Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey has told him the surveillance legislation "is a good bill" that would help U.S. intelligence learn enemy plans for new attacks on the United States. He said it ensures that telecommunications companies will be "protected from liability for past or future cooperation" with the federal government.

House and Senate leaders agreed yesterday on the surveillance legislation, handing Bush one of the last major legislative victories he is likely to achieve.

The breakthrough on the legislation came hours after the White House agreed to Democratic demands for domestic spending additions to the emergency war funding bill. Taken together, the bills -- two of the last major pieces of legislation to be approved by Congress this year -- suggest that Bush still wields considerable clout on national security issues but now must acquiesce to Democratic demands on favored domestic priorities to secure victory.

The war spending bill, for example, includes $162 billion for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and an additional $95 billion worth of domestic spending on programs such as unemployment insurance and higher education benefits for veterans. The war-funding and domestic provisions of the bill were voted on separately. Bush, who had threatened for months to veto the legislation, said he will sign it.

He previously had resisted any measure that would add domestic spending to his $108 billion war-funding request. He also had opposed the expanded G.I. Bill, which the White House said was too costly and could further strain the military by encouraging members to leave the service rather than reenlist.

Leading Democrats acknowledged that the surveillance legislation is not their preferred approach, but they said their refusal in February to pass the version supported by the Bush administration paved the way for victories on other legislation, such as the war funding bill.

"When they saw that we were unified in sending that bill rather than falling for their scare tactics, I think it sent them a message," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "So our leverage was increased because of our Democratic unity in both cases."

Under the surveillance agreement, which is expected to be approved next week by the Senate, telecoms could have privacy lawsuits thrown out if they show a federal judge that they received written assurance from the Bush administration that the spying was legal.

That part of the bill is a compromise by Republicans and the Bush administration, which had opposed giving federal judges any significant role in granting legal immunity to the phone companies.

The legislation also would require court approval of procedures for intercepting telephone calls and e-mails that pass through U.S.-based servers -- another step that the White House and GOP lawmakers previously resisted.

"It is the result of compromise, and like any compromise it is not perfect, but I believe it strikes a sound balance," said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), the lead Democratic negotiator in talks between lawmakers and the White House.

Overall, the deal appears to give intelligence agencies much of what they had sought in a new surveillance law.