FISA Amendments Act of 2008

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank him for his great leadership as the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. I commend him.

I commend Mr. Conyers, the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee, for although he is not supporting the legislation before us today, he certainly had a tremendous impact to improve it. Thank you for your relentless championing of civil liberties in our country, Mr. Conyers.

I want to pay special tribute to our majority leader, Mr. Hoyer, for making this compromise possible today. It's a very difficult task, many competing views as to how we should go forward. Mr. Hoyer handled it all with great intellect and great respect for all of those views. Thank you, Mr. Hoyer.

Also want to acknowledge Mr. Smith and Mr. Hoekstra and minority whip, Mr. Blunt, for their leadership in giving us this opportunity today.

We've heard it over and over again. Our colleagues say this bill is not perfect, this isn't the bill I would write. I prefer this bill, I prefer that bill.

Well, I prefer the House bill that passed and was sent to the Senate. It isn't an option for us. I do not, I totally reject the Senate bill which is an option, and that is the comparison that we have to make, the contrast that we have to make today.

But in doing so, I think we all understand the important responsibility that we have in this Congress, focused on this debate today. I always take the debate back to our responsibility when we take the oath of office. We take an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. In that preamble to our Constitution, we must provide for the common defense. Essential to honoring that commitment to protect the American people is to have the intelligence, operational intelligence that will help us do that.

When I first went on the Intelligence Committee, our focus was on force protection. Our troops in the field depend on timely and reliable intelligence to make the decisions necessary to keep them safe and to do their job. Force protection, force protection, force protection. It is still a primary responsibility of our intelligence.

In addition to that, we have the fight on the war against terrorism, the fight against terrorism, wherever it may exist. Good intelligence is necessary for us to know the plans of the terrorists and to defeat those plans.

So we can't go without a bill. That's just simply not an option. But to have a bill, we must have a bill that does not violate the Constitution of the United States, and this bill does not.

Some in the press have said that under this legislation, this bill would allow warrantless surveillance of Americans. That is not true. This bill does not allow warrantless surveillance of Americans. I just think we have to stipulate to some set of facts.

We may have our opinions about the bill, but there have been so many versions of the story of different bills that have come up, the PAA last year, which I thought was totally unacceptable. The Senate bill, also unacceptable. Our House bill, which I mentioned before, which I thought was the appropriate way to go, and now this compromise.

As I was talking with Mr. Hoyer in the course of his negotiations, there were certain things that I thought had to be in the bill to make it acceptable, certain threshold issues that had to be there, and they are.

In terms of the original FISA bill, it's interesting to note that this bill is an improvement on that in three important ways.

First, we all recognize the changes in technology necessitate a change in the legislation, and this legislation today modernizes our intelligence-gathering system by recognizing and responding to technological developments that have occurred since the original FISA Act in 1978. In doing so, we can make the country safer in a more advanced technological way.

Second, and this is very, very important, and there's some misunderstanding about this. This bill provides that Americans overseas receive the same FISA protection, including an individualized warrant based on probable cause, as Americans living within the country. This is a very important improvement on the original FISA Act.

Third, this bill strengthens congressional oversight. And this is very important, the transparency. Transparency and intelligence don't always go together, but accountability is central to intelligence. This strengthens congressional oversight by requiring that the executive branch provide more extensive information about the conduct of surveillance to both the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee. This is new, this is better. The more we know, the better, I think, the law will be enforced.

If this bill does not pass, we will most certainly be left with the Senate bill. I think that's clear. And this bill is an improvement over the Senate bill in the following ways, just to name a few.

First of all, it reaffirms that FISA is the exclusive means of collecting foreign intelligence, and makes absolutely clear that the enactment of an authorization for the use of force does not give the President, whoever he may be, any inherent authority to alter the requirements of FISA. Very important.

This is important because President Bush believed, and this was what we were told, that he, as President of the United States, had inherent authority under the Constitution to do almost anything he wanted. And what this bill reaffirms is that the FISA law is the authority for collecting foreign intelligence. There is no inherent authority of the President to do whatever he wants. This is a democracy. It is not a monarchy.

Secondly, it is an improvement of the Senate bill. And by the way, no offense to President Bush. I wouldn't want any President, Democrat or Republican, a Democratic President or a Republican President to have that authority.

Secondly, the bill provides that, except in rare circumstances there will be pre-surveillance review by the FISA Court.

And when I say rare circumstance, I mean very, very rare.

Unlike the Senate bill, this legislation retains FISA's broad definition of electronic surveillance and thus guarantees that basic protections of FISA apply to all the new forms of collection authorized by the bill. There had been an attempt, and that's why the Senate bill is inferior in this respect, to just narrow it to certain kinds of collection, and this says it applies to all collection, electronic surveillance.

Fourth, it contains specific protections against reverse targeting. This reverse targeting is very, very important to the civil liberties of the American people, and I am satisfied by the specific provisions against reverse targeting. It provides a full and independent review of the President's surveillance program by the Inspector General of the relevant agencies.

Of course, there are aspects of this compromise bill that I do not like. I don't believe that Congress should be in the business of interfering with ongoing lawsuits and attempting to grant immunity to telecommunication companies that allegedly violated the law. Those companies have not lived up to a standard expected by the American people. I don't think today is any cause for celebration for them. They come out of this with a taint.

I do not believe that the pending lawsuits would have achieved what we would have liked them to do which is what the Inspector General's review would, which is to learn the truth about the President's terrorist surveillance program and give us the information we need to make sure that never happens again.

In addition, this legislation makes sure that in the future, the telephone companies must fully comply with Federal statutes.

Again, it would have been my preference to vote for the RESTORE Act that the House sent over to the Senate. I do not consider it an option to live with the Senate bill. This is the opportunity that we have to protect the American people through the gathering of intelligence which is essential, as I said earlier, to force protection, to protect our men and women in uniform and help them make the decisions they need to do their jobs and keep them safe and to fight terrorists by learning their plans in advance and squelching them.

I want to thank those who have worked so hard to bring this bill to the floor. Again, it's not a happy occasion, but it's the work that we have to do. I think we have to remember getting back to the Constitution. The House, article 1, legislates. We pass the laws. The judiciary interprets the law. The executive branch enforces the law. And what is very important about whatever we pass, especially in relating to subjects relating to our security and our liberty, it's important that the President of the United States enforce this law honoring the Constitution of the United States recognizing the responsibility that we all have to protect the American people and protect the Constitution of the United States at the same time.

So again, a difficult decision for all of us. I respect every opinion that was expressed on this floor today. The knowledge, the sincerity, the passion and the intellect of those who support and oppose this have been very, very valuable in making the bill better, if not good enough for some, but certainly preferable to the alternative that we have which is the Senate bill which must be rejected.

I'm not asking anybody to vote for this bill. I just wanted you to know why I was.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

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