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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am pleased to join you in introducing the Restore Act of 2007. This legislation will, as the name implies, restore the proper role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the maintenance of our national security infrastructure.
Let's get the terms of this debate clear before we begin. No one and certainly not this bill is suggesting that our government should not listen to the terrorists to find out what they are doing and plotting. Anyone who can read will see that this bill does not inhibit the government's ability to spy on terrorists or on suspected terrorists.
This bill gives our intelligence agencies the tools they have told us they need to make us safe and gives the FISA Court the tools it needs to ensure that the extraordinary powers we are giving to the intelligence community are used correctly and consistently with our laws and our Constitution.
The American people expect that their government will keep us all safe and free. We've survived all previous threats that way and we will survive the war on terror that way.
This bill will not require intelligence agencies to stop listening to terrorists. It will never require that our intelligence agencies go out and get individualized warrants for terrorists located outside the United States.
It will provide reasonable secret court oversight to ensure that when our government starts spying on Americans, it does so lawfully by getting a warrant from the secret foreign intelligence court. It also puts an end to this administration's well worn "trust me" routine.
It says the FISA Court will supervise many things that right now go completely unsupervised and we have to take on faith from the administration, and we have learned we can take on faith nothing from this administration.
Congress will receive independent reports on how the act is working and what our government is doing. This administration's pension for secrecy and aversion to accountability will come to an end, at least in this area.
And, finally, let me say a word about retroactive immunity. If the administration broke the law, if it broke the law and if it asked telecom communications to break the law and if they broke the law, they should be subject to lawsuits, and if they didn't break the law, that's why they have millions and millions of dollars worth of lawyers and that's why we have courts to determine whether they broke the law.
To retroactively immunize anybody and say, "If you broke the law, it's OK, we don't want to know about it," is to surrender the rule of law. We heard a lot about the rule of law about 10 years ago in this room. It is crucial that especially in an era when the administration uses the State Secrets Doctrine to prevent people who think they were illegally wiretapped from bringing a lawsuit, it is crucial that private suits against telecommunications companies be permitted, because only that way can the courts determine whether, in fact, the administration broke the law, whether, in fact, the telecommunications broke the law.
And if they did, they should be held accountable. If they didn't, let the courts find that out. We shouldn't short-circuit that and we certainly shouldn't say that, "You are free to break the law if an administration asks you to in the name of national security."
If the administration says, "We're breaking the law. Why don't you join us," you have a responsibility to say no. Otherwise, you have lawless administrations like this one getting away with even more than they have.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.
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