And people still don't believe there's a problem for some reason...
How many rights do we lose before we say "enough"?
Friday, May 2, 2003
War on Terrorism: Democrats reject expanded CIA powers
GOP proposal would allow subpoenas of domestic records
By ERIC LICHTBLAU AND JAMES RISEN
THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought yesterday to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said.
The proposal would give the CIA and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas -- known as "national security letters" -- requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a variety of other groups to produce such things as phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the FBI, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.
The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill pending before Congress.
It set off fierce debate yesterday in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to mark a significant expansion of the role of the CIA and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said.
After raising objections, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and other Democrats succeeded in getting the motion pulled from the authorization bill, at least temporarily, congressional officials said.
In a closed vote, the committee passed the bill unanimously without the proposal. But Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who is chairman of the intelligence committee, indicated to panel members that he wanted to hold further hearings on the idea and bring it back up, officials said.
There was some disagreement over how the motion originated. Several Senate aides active in the debate said that Roberts had included the motion in the authorization bill, but a senior congressional official said it was the Bush administration that initiated the proposal and Roberts did not object.
A CIA spokesman said the provision had come from the Bush administration, after the White House's Office of Management and Budget had signed off on it.
The official said that congressional leaders had asked the Bush administration whether there were any additional powers that were needed to help in combating terrorism.
The administration had responded to that inquiry with the proposal to allow the CIA and military the right to use the national security letters, the official said. Another congressional official said the move came at the urging of the CIA.
Because the FBI now has primary responsibility for domestic intelligence operations, the CIA and the military must currently go to the FBI to request that it issue a national security letter to get access to financial and electronic records.
A senior congressional official said the Bush administration believes that giving the CIA and the military direct authority to demand the records would cut down on the lag time in the process, and give those organizations more flexibility to combat terrorism.
Administration officials downplayed the significance of the proposal, maintaining that it would not give the CIA or the military access to any information that they cannot already get through the FBI.
But Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were alarmed by the idea that the CIA and the military could begin prying into Americans' personal and financial records as part of intelligence and terrorism operations.
They said that while the FBI is subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the CIA and the military would appear to have much freer reign to conduct intelligence operations in the United States and demand access to personal records.
The FBI also faces additional scrutiny if it attempts to use such records in a court case, but officials said the proposal could give the CIA and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subjected to judicial oversight.
Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American."
Edgar said that "even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the CIA such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens," he said.
A congressional Democratic aide said the measure appeared to go well beyond even hotly debated anti-terrorism measures that the Justice Department has been considering in past months.
"This is a very odd and very far-reaching idea that came out of nowhere," said the aide. "It raises a whole series of questions about what the CIA's mission has really become."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA and the military have assumed greater authority overseas over what were once law-enforcement terrorism investigations, and the traditional lines between domestic and overseas operations have become increasingly blurred.
A new terrorism center, led by the CIA, began operation yesterday in an effort to better coordinate the activities of different federal agencies, but civil liberties groups said they are worried that it will give the CIA authority to conduct domestic operations.
The proposal to allow the CIA and the Pentagon authority to demand domestic records appears to reflect another move in that direction, and it comes at a time when both Democrats and Republicans have voiced growing concerns about the government's expanded powers to fight terrorism.
New figures released yesterday also showed that the Justice Department is relying with increasing frequency on secret warrants that allow the department to go to a secret court to get approval for surveillance and bugging warrants in terrorism and espionage investigations without notifying the target.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an annual report that the Justice Department used those secret warrants a record number of 1,228 times in 2002 -- an increase of more than 30 percent over the year before.
The court that governs the warrants did not turn down any of the Justice Department's applications, officials said.