Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:01:05 -0700 (PDT)
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House closes its doors for spying bill By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
30 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The House held a closed session Thursday for the first time in 25
years to discuss a hotly contested surveillance bill.
Republicans requested privacy for what they termed an honest debate on the
new Democratic eavesdropping measure that is opposed by the White House and
most Republicans in Congress.
Lawmakers were forbidden to disclose what was said during the hour-long
session. The extent to which minds were changed, if at all, should be more
clear Friday, when the House was expected to openly debate and then vote on the
bill.
Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas said she didn't believe anyone
changed positions but that the session was useful because no one would be able
to complain on Friday that their views had not been heard.
We couldn't have gone more of an extra mile to make sure we're doing the best
for national security, she told The Associated Press.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence
Committee, said in an interview that he read aloud the titles but not details
of intelligence reports that shows the nature of the global threat and how
dynamic the situation is, and how fluid.
Hoekstra said the House discussed the procedures intelligence agencies use to
protect the identities of innocent Americans whose calls and e-mails are
incidentally intercepted in wiretaps.
Hoekstra said three Democrats spoke as did eight or nine Republicans.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said there was nothing new, nothing that wasn't
public, nothing that can't and shouldn't be debated on the floor tomorrow in
open session.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said he heard nothing new that would
change his mind about the bill.
Tomorrow, I will urge members on both sides of the aisle to vote for this
legislation, Hoyer said.
The last such session in the House was in 1983 on U.S. support for paramilitary
operations in Nicaragua. Only five closed sessions have taken place in the
House since 1825.
Four members declined to sign the confidentiality oath required to participate
in the closed session, House staff members said.
Many Democrats initially objected, calling it a political ploy by Republicans
to delay a vote on the bill. House leaders did in fact push off the scheduled
vote until Friday, just before taking a two-week recess. If it passes, the bill
would need Senate approval before going to the president.
President Bush has vowed to veto it, saying it would undermine the nation's
security.
Bush opposes it in part because it doesn't provide full, retroactive legal
protection to telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop
on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks.
About 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecommunications companies by
people and organizations alleging they violated wiretapping and privacy laws.
The lawsuits have been combined and are pending before a single federal judge
in California.
The Democrats' measure would encourage the judge to review in private the
secret government documents underpinning the program in order to decide whether
the companies acted lawfully. If they did, the lawsuits would be dismissed.
The administration has prevented those documents from being revealed, even to a
judge, by invoking the state secrets privilege. That puts the companies in a
bind because they cannot use the documents to defend themselves in court.
It wasn't clear what information would be presented in the closed session. Just
a fraction of Congress has been allowed to read secret documents underpinning
the surveillance program, and those who have arrived at varying conclusions.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, after seeing classified material, said the
companies acted on the good-faith belief that the wiretaps they allowed were
lawful. Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees were
unconvinced after being presented with the same material.
The surveillance law is intended to help in the pursuit of suspected terrorists
by making it easier to eavesdrop on foreign phone calls and e-mails that pass
through the United States. A temporary law expired Feb. 16 before Congress was
able to produce a replacement bill. Bush opposed an extension of the temporary
law as a tactic to pressure Congress into accepting the Senate version of the
surveillance legislation. The Senate's bill provides retroactive legal immunity
for the telecommunications companies.
Bush said lawsuits against telecom companies would lead to the disclosure of
state secrets. Further, he said lawsuits would undermine the willingness of
