Pelosi & Co. Endanger U.S. National Security

Human Events, Feb 25, 2008 by Babbin, Jed

With great fanfare. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the agenda for her first 100 hours last January. One of the seven things she promised to do was to enact all the remaining recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. One year later, with few of those items accomplished, Pelosi is gambling recklessly that terrorists will miss the opportunities given them by the House's failure to pass essential fixes to the Foreign Intelli-. gence Surveillance Act (FISA).

When the 9/11 Commission's report came out July 2004, its most scathing criticism of the intelligence community was for failing to "connect the dots"-to cooperate in gathering, analyzing and using the information we have on terrorists'. intentions and capabilities. The . "connect the dots" mantra was the basis for legislative reorganizations of the intelligence community, including the creation of the new director of National Intelligence (DNI) to coordinate all the agencies and the role of the new Department of Homeland security in analyzing intelligence on terrorist threats.

Gather the Dots

But before you "connect the dots" you have to gather them. The National Security Agency (NSA) terrorist-surveillance program, created in secret by presidential order, was enormously successful in intercepting cell-phone calls, e-mails and other electronic communications between terrorists and their sympathizers. It resulted in the gathering of huge amounts of data and the interdiction of a number of terrorist attacks. It has also helped battlefield operations in Iraq and Afghanistan because the separation of national intelligence-gathering assets and armed forces operations has-wisely-been almost completely eliminated.

That NSA top-secret program suffered two damaging blows. First, its effectiveness was reduced when the New York Times revealed its existence, despite direct pleas from the White House. second, a secret decision by the FISA court this time last year imposed a new requirement that a FISA court warrant be obtained before NSA could listen to communications even between foreigners overseas if the communication passed through U.S.-located computers and switching equipment.

The decision effectively blocked surveillance on new "targets"-people, specific telephone numbers and e-mail addresses-without FISA warrants. The effect on our intelligence gathering was so devastating that in April 2007, DNI Mike McConnell went in person to the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee-Jay Rockefeller (D.-W.Va.) and Christopher Bond (R.-Mo.)-and asked for urgent action to fix the problem. Working through partisan wrangling took until August 3, when a patchwork fix was passed on the eve of a congressional recess.

In the interim. Bond told me in an interview two weeks ago, we had "gone about four months without being able to go after any new targets." Now-because Pelosi blocked the vote and allowed the August fixes to expire-we're back to where we were last April: unable to gather intelligence from new "targets." It's a license for bin, Laden and his terrorists to communicate without fear of interception.

Pelosi and most of the House Democrats are erasing the dots, not helping intelligence analysts to connect them. Two weeks ago, Pelosi blocked a vote by which the House would have passed the bipartisan Senate version of the FISA reforms legislation essential to fixing the problem created by the FIS A court and keeping the National security Agency's terrorist-surveillance program going. Pelosi did that despite a letter she received from most of the "Blue Dog" Democrats telling her they'd vote for the Senate bill. Added to Republican numbers, the Blue Dogs' votes would have enabled Pelosi to pass the bill on a simple majority vote.

Instead, she killed the effort, the House recessed and the August patchwork FISA legislation expired Saturday, February 16.

The House's failure comes at a critical time. Imad Mugniyeh, one of the world's most-wanted terrorists, was killed in Syria recently. His terrorist network, Iranianbacked Hezbollah, has threatened revenge against the U.S. and Israel, but NSA is left nearly blind to new intelligence targets.

And what of that SEAL platoon-maybe trying to capture or kill a high-value target or rescue a kidnapped U.S. soldier-left waiting for six or eight hours, lacking critical information while someone writes a FISA warrant for a new intelligence target? House liberals don't care.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R .-Mich.)-ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee-focused on these threats while his Democratic counterparts were content to ignore them. Hoekstra told me, "So just as they are gearing up their planning as to how they're going to retaliate, we are going blind. You throw in a few Danish cartoons, you throw in al Qaeda in Iraq saying 'We want to attack.Israel,' ... and I would not have wanted to be going home yesterday afternoon after not having done anything."

Short-term extensions of the August fixes are no longer an option. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.Ky.) told me February 15, "For six months, the communications companies have been waiting for us to fix this retroactive liability problem. They have 40 lawsuits against them. They have fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders, their CEOs, to their board of directors-they can't cooperate much longer. And what's going to happen if we don't get it fixed is the program is going to go away. Because these are not government employees, you can't order them to do it."