FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 28, 2006

CONTACT: Brendan Daly/Jennifer Crider 202-226-7616

Pelosi: Intelligence Gathering Must Comply With the Constitution

Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke on the House floor this evening in favor of a bipartisan motion to update provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to provide intelligence agencies more flexibility in emergency situations when applying for warrants, while still requiring court orders for domestic surveillance of Americans.  Below are Pelosi’s remarks:

“Mr. Speaker, each of us wants the President to have all of the intelligence necessary to protect our country and to protect the American people. 

“We spend billions of dollars every year to make sure the most reliable intelligence possible is available in a timely fashion to the President and our military commanders.

“We know that intelligence collection can involve highly intrusive methods.  That is the reality of intelligence gathering.  But when those methods are employed against people within the United States, it is imperative that they comply with the Constitution, and that they be subjected to regular and thorough congressional and judicial oversight.

“For 28 years, the statutory basis for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes has been FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“The reason FISA exists was because in 1975, the Church Committee found numerous instances of warrantless electronic surveillance and physical searches of U.S. citizens who were not spies, but who advocated unpopular political views.

“FISA was a compromise designed to prevent overreaches unrelated to our national security while clarifying when warrantless surveillance could be used for domestic security purposes.  The FISA process has worked well for nearly three decades, and that success is due in part to the fact that we have been able to modify it as the needs and technologies change.  In fact, FISA has been modified 51 times since 1978.

“FISA can be changed.  It can be updated.  It can be broadened or amended.  But it should not be circumvented.  And that’s what this bill does tonight.  It tries to circumvent FISA and our Constitution.

“Last December, President Bush confirmed press reports that he had permitted warrantless surveillance to occur outside of the FISA process, and that he had both inherent and statutory authority to do so.

“FISA is – and must remain – the exclusive means for authorizing warrantless surveillance of people in the United States for intelligence purposes.  This ‘exclusivity’ provision is what allows for judicial and congressional oversight, and protects all of us from abuse.

“Unfortunately, the bill now under consideration eliminates that protection.  Instead, it accepts the President’s argument that there are circumstances in which he needs to be able to order surveillance without using the FISA process, and then provides him the authority to do so.

“If this bill passes, rather than being the exclusive means for authorizing surveillance, FISA would be just one option.  The result will be less oversight and therefore fewer checks on abuses of executive power.

“I heard my colleagues on the other side say ridiculous things, and they know better, in fact, they know what they are saying could not possibly be true.  They are saying, ‘If we pick up the phone and hear terrorists on the line, Democrats want us to hang up.’  You have to really be very kind not to attribute some sinister motivation to anyone who would say such a thing.  Of course, that is not the case.  That is what is so important about the FISA, because it does allow our collectors to listen in while they are brought under the law of FISA.  That is the beauty of the motion to recommit that Mr. Schiff, Mr. Flake, Ms. Harman, and others will be putting forward this evening.

“It simply says that the vote to go into Afghanistan did not give the President the authority to avoid the law and undermine the Constitution.  It says that FISA can be updated, it provides more funding for the implementation of FISA, and it extends the number of days under which a collection may be done without a FISA warrant.  It in fact modernizes FISA in a way that is appropriate but maintains the exclusivity that is central to the President operating under the law. 

“The combination of the military commissions bill passed yesterday and this bill will be an unprecedented expansion of executive authority into some of the most fundamental liberties enshrined in our Constitution: the right to privacy and the right to due process of law.  These are not merely academic, legal, or technical matters.  These rights are at the heart of what makes us unique as a nation and I believe they will be diminished by the passage of these bills.

“The President claims that inherent in his office is all the authority needed to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance.  Rather than enshrine in law powers the President has claimed he already holds, we should continue to have judicial review of the President’s domestic surveillance program proceed.  At that point, we can determine if additional adjustments to FISA are necessary.  We do not need to pass this diminishment of our privacy tonight.

“Of course, that would require something that the Administration has thus far been unwilling to allow – congressional hearings on the domestic surveillance program.  Congress needs answers to questions that remain unresolved after the unsatisfactory and sterile briefings provided thus far by the Administration.

“Until that happens, we should be reaffirming the exclusivity of FISA and our commitment to providing whatever additional resources and procedural enhancements might be necessary to facilitate its operation.  That is exactly what the bipartisan Schiff-Flake-Harman-Inglis amendment would do.

“The Republican leadership should have ensured that the House had a chance to consider that amendment today.  That would have been the fair thing to do.  Instead, we have to force the issue through a motion to recommit.  That motion is the only initiative that stands between us and a vote on a bad bill.

“I urge the adoption of the motion in the spirit of protecting the American people of expanding the time allowed to collect without a FISA warrant and to do so with exclusivity and under the law to honor our oath of office we take to uphold the Constitution.

“Anyone who says that we want to hang up on Osama bin Laden demeans the debate, can’t possibly be serious, and owes the American people better.”

“ Democrats are united in presenting a New Direction for America, one that will make our nation as strong as its people, one that brings opportunity, security, and prosperity to all Americans. ”

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi