Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

Floor Speech

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT -- (House of Representatives - October 23, 2007)

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Well, I thank the gentleman for yielding and I thank him for his leadership on the security issues that affect our great Nation.

And, Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman from California knows, national security is one of the major issues that we hear about every single day. Our constituents want to be certain that America, that our interests, that our communities are safe, and certainly, as we are looking at FISA, this is an issue that is coming before us.

One of the things that we hear regularly from constituents is, what are you doing about it? What are you doing about tracking down these terrorists? What are you doing about finding those that want to kill us? What are you doing?

Well, we did some good things last year. As the gentleman from California mentioned, the provisions that we passed, Admiral McConnell's recommendations, the pathway forward for us, how we were to proceed to be certain that we could use the information that we had.

And now the RESTORE Act, and I do like the acronym that he is using, Repeal Effective Surveillance Techniques Opposing Real Enemies. That is an appropriate acronym for the bill that they brought forward.

And I think, Mr. Speaker, that our colleagues across the aisle forget that it is FISA. Maybe they think it is the U.S. Intelligence Surveillance Act, or USISA. They forget that it is FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We do seek to find those who would seek to do us harm and end our way of life. That is something we should be about every single day.

Now, we've heard from lots of people on the FISA issue, and the gentleman from California brings such a wide range of knowledge on this, and I know he is going to be joined by others, others of our colleagues who are going to touch on this issue. Many of them are from the Republican Study Committee, and they're going to bring their expertise to bear on this.

I want to touch on one quick point. The gentleman from California highlighted some of Admiral McConnell's recommendations and procedures that we took to be certain that we closed the terrorist loophole. And the measure that the liberal leadership brought forward, the RESTORE Act, would reopen the terrorist loophole. The Democrat FISA bill creates a process by which a court order is required for U.S. persons who are outside the United States.

As the gentleman from California mentioned, if a foreign target operating overseas, such as Osama bin Laden, has either had contact with a U.S. person or called a U.S. number, our intelligence officials would be required, if this bill passed, to obtain a FISA court order to listen to those communications.

Well, in Tennessee, we would say that just doesn't make good sense, and it doesn't, Mr. Speaker; and it is frightening to think that there are those among us who may want to deal with terrorists more delicately than they would handle the welfare and well-being of our communities.

I would also highlight the New York Post and a comment that they had as we were working through the FISA overhaul and looking at these situations dealing with these cumbersome legal requirements. The New York Post quotes in an October 15, 2007, article: ``A search to rescue the men was quickly launched. But it soon ground to a halt as lawyers obeying U.S. strict laws about surveillance cobbled together the legal grounds for wiretapping the suspected kidnappers. For an excruciating 9 hours and 38 minutes searchers in Iraq waited as U.S. lawyers discussed legal issues and hammered out the `probable cause' necessary for the Attorney General to grant such `emergency' permission.''

We know the emergency. We know the probable cause. Men were under attack and they needed to be found. We are in a time of war. The terrorists are there to end our way of life. We have to stay a couple of steps in front of them, Mr. Speaker; and as the gentleman from California has so eloquently said, the way we do this is with a commonsense approach and very thoughtful approach to our intelligence surveillance that we have on our foreign enemies.

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. The gentleman from Missouri is exactly right.

These are people who do not seek to do us well. They seek to do us harm. That, we have to keep in mind.

As the gentleman from Missouri mentioned, we have had tremendous technological changes with how our signals are transmitted when you are dealing with telephones, with cell phones, with satellite phones, with voice, video and data, with those communications.

Things have changed, and we are not focused on the end use; we are more focused on the technology and the changes that we sought in August would allow, and that we gained in August allowed our intelligence community to be able to exercise a little bit more leeway in obtaining these communications from those who would seek to do us harm.

Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. If I could just respond to that, let's remember, we are not talking about domestic terrorists. We are not talking about domestic criminals. We are not talking about American citizens. We are talking about non-Americans not in the United States. That's what we are talking about, and the American people need to understand that.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I want to bring the attention back to the poster that is on the floor there. Just as he would say, this is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

As I said earlier, it is not USISA. It is not the United States Intelligence Surveillance Act. This is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

That is so important that we keep this in mind. As the gentleman said, these are people who are not U.S. citizens who are seeking to do us harm.

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