Congressman Lamar Smith, Twenty First Congressional
District of Texas
Mr. Speaker, the debate today is not about Republican versus Democratic arguments. It’s not about right-wing or left-wing ideologies. It’s about protecting our country. And it’s about protecting American lives.
We should recall the story about the three American soldiers who were killed in Iraq last May. When the U.S. military discovered that the soldiers had been kidnapped by terrorists, they launched a full scale search and rescue mission.
In the early hours of the operation, U.S. intelligence officials on the ground discovered a lead that required immediate electronic surveillance of phone conversations. But the terrorist loophole—which requires a court order from Washington before conducting surveillance on a foreign target—prevented our intelligence officials from gathering information for almost 10 hours.
The body of one of the soldiers was later found in the Euphrates River. Terrorists claim to have executed the other two soldiers.
We will never know if that information could have helped save the lives of our soldiers. But we do know that the terrorist loophole tied our hands then and perhaps is costing us lives now.
Prior to enactment of the Protect America Act, the Director of National Intelligence Admiral McConnell warned Congress that our intelligence community was “missing” two-thirds of all overseas terrorists’ communications.
Three weeks ago, the Protect America Act expired and our intelligence community lost the tools they need to monitor terrorists overseas and protect Americans here at home. We cannot recover the foreign intelligence lost because of Congress’ inaction. This intelligence might have given us information about terrorists’ plots or foreign espionage. I hope these missed opportunities will not lead to a terrorist attack in the U.S. or other countries that could have been prevented.
We are now 27 days late and much intelligence short because of the Democratic Leadership’s refusal to consider the bipartisan Senate bill. If they had brought it to floor three weeks ago, it would have easily passed and America would be safer today.
But rather than modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the Democratic Majority’s bill weakens it.
First, the Democrats’ bill requires a court order before the government can begin surveillance of a foreign terrorist overseas. FISA has never required a court order to target foreigners overseas. As we saw in May, this causes significant delays in gathering foreign intelligence—placing Americans at greater risk.
Second, the Democrats’ bill denies giving immunity to telecommunications providers who assisted the government following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The past and future cooperation of these companies is essential to our national security.
Ninety-eight percent of America’s communications technology is owned by private sector companies. We cannot conduct foreign surveillance without them. But if we continue to subject them to billion dollar lawsuits, we risk losing their cooperation in the future.
In fact, this bill is so flawed that the President has promised to veto it. Even Senator Reid, the Democratic Majority Leader, acknowledges that this legislation will never pass the Senate.
Congress can and must do better than this bill. Our liberties, our security and the future of our nation depend on it.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this fatally flawed legislation and ask the Democratic Majority to bring the bipartisan Senate bill to the floor for a vote.
