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Mixed Results on Bush's Wiretap Plan Specter's Senate Panel Oks Secret Court to Judge Package; Some Republicans Balk on Detainee Trials
By Eric Lichtblau and Kate Zernike
The New York Times
September 14, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The White House yesterday took a critical step in its effort to get congressional blessing for President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, but it ran into increasingly fierce resistance from leading Republicans over its plan to try terror suspects being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The mixed results signaled the tough road the White House faces in trying to sell the two key planks in its national security agenda to sometimes-skeptical congressional Republicans less than two months before the midterm elections. Democrats have allowed Republicans to fight among themselves over the issues, and appear willing to allow the issues to come to a vote rather than risk charges of political obstructionism in an election season.
The White House has turned its focus to Capitol Hill as part of a broad push to shift the public debate toward national security and away from Iraq. After kicking off the campaign in a series of recent speeches, Mr. Bush is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill this morning to rally support for his proposals.
On the domestic eavesdropping program, aggressive White House lobbying began to pay dividends yesterday, as the Senate Judiciary Committee approved -- on a straight party-line vote -- two legislative approaches favored by the White House, along with a third the Bush administration opposes. The program would allow the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant on the international phone calls and e-mail of people in the United States.
With Republicans united in support, the panel approved on a 10-8 vote a hotly debated plan crafted in negotiations between the White House and Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa. The plan would allow a secret court to rule on the constitutionality of the wiretapping program.
The measure would also implicitly recognize the president's constitutional authority to gather foreign intelligence, a concession that Democrats and civil rights advocates argue would drastically expand the president's authority to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant.
The panel also approved a proposal by Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, that would require the administration to notify Congress when it conducted wiretaps without a warrant.
Democrats claimed partial victory on the wiretapping controversy when they succeeded in getting the Judiciary panel to approve another measure that could effectively ban the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program. That plan, drafted by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D- Calif., would reaffirm the foreign intelligence law passed by Congress in 1978, requiring court approval for eavesdropping, as the "exclusive" means for authorizing wiretaps in the United States against suspected terrorists and spies.
Democrats succeeded in getting two critical GOP moderates, Mr. Specter and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both of whom have voiced concerns about legal aspects of the wiretapping program, to vote in favor of the proposal and send it to the full Senate for a vote. That set the stage for the unusual spectacle of the Judiciary Committee -- and its chairman -- supporting two proposals that many lawmakers said would effectively nullify each other if passed.
But negotiations between Capitol Hill and the White House broke down as three GOP senators crucial to passage of the legislation hardened their stance against a White House plan that would reinterpret a key provision of the Geneva Conventions.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner, R-Va., said the committee would vote today in a closed session on an alternative that he and his two chief allies -- Mr. Graham and fellow Republican John McCain of Arizona -- have championed, even if the White House refuses to go along with them.
The senators have said changes to the U.S. interpretation of the Geneva Conventions provision, known as Common Article 3, would undermine the nation's international credibility and open the way for other countries to treat captured U.S. troops at their whim. "This is not about November 2006; it is not about your election, it is about those who take risks to defend America," Mr. Graham said.
The Bush administration pushed back, convening a conference call in which Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte described the Senate alternative as unacceptable. He said the plan would impose intolerable limits on any interrogation methods that U.S. intelligence officers might use against future terror suspects held by the Central Intelligence Agency in secret overseas prisons.
The House appears on track to endorse the White House proposal, with the House Armed Services Committee yesterday voting overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that looks much like the president's.
The White House political strategy in the past week has been twofold. First, Mr. Bush was in the public spotlight with a string of national security speeches; now, the administration is trying to put Democrats in a box by forcing them to take a stand and vote on the president's authority to run two of his most controversial anti- terror programs.
But Mr. Warner, Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham appeared to be providing the Democrats cover, allowing them to stay on the sidelines while the three senators -- all respected Republicans with distinguished military records -- take on the White House.
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