Nadler Statement on the Nadler Amendmen At the Markup of H.R. 3773, the “Responsible Electronic Surveillance That is Overseen, Reviewed, and Effective Act of 2007”

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that the rhetoric on this bill and this amendment is a little disturbing.

Everybody in this Congress, everybody in this committee, both sides of the aisle, are committed to defeating the terrorists and to protecting the American people.

Everybody recognizes the awfulness of what happened in my district on September 11. Everyone wants to protect us from further damage. Everyone wants to have surveillance and wiretapping and spying on terrorists and suspected terrorists, everybody.

So let's cut out the rhetoric about we don't understand that. The question is under what protections of American liberty will we conduct the necessary surveillance and the necessary wiretapping and the necessary spying.

Do we continue in the American tradition and say that no administration, no president, no public official is an angel or can be trusted to be an angel and can be trusted with this power without some sort of checks and balances, without some sort of court review?

The other side of the aisle seems to be saying, "No, trust the administration." The administration seems to be saying, "Trust the administration." The so-called Protect America Act said, "Trust the administration."

This act says, "Trust the administration to be human beings, not to be perfect, to be fallible, perhaps to be tempted to cut corners in the service of a good end, but to the detriment of liberty and privacy unnecessarily."

This bill says, "Let us subject the administration, as is our entire tradition since Magna Carta, to judicial oversight. Let the FISA Court, a secret court, oversee this process."

That's essentially what this bill does and that's essentially all it does. And that is in our tradition. It gives the administration the power -- it modernizes the old law. It says that foreign-to- foreign communications can be wiretapped without warrants, but it says it is subject, everything is subject to review, in the first instance, by the court and ultimately by the secret FISA Court, and ultimately by reports to the Congress.

That's essentially the change it makes.

Now, I want to point out specifically, with respect to the remarks of the previous gentleman, that the existing law that was passed, that the administration proposed that was passed in August already authorizes court review of targeting already and Admiral McConnell, the director of national intelligence, at a House Intelligence Committee hearing just last month, signed off on the concept of court review of minimization procedures.

So these provisions of the bill should not be startling and should not raise questions that they would tie the hands of the administration when the administration says they would not.

I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and I yield back to him.

###