Letter from DNI Highlights National Intelligence Need;
Wilson Again Urges Defeat of Rule to Force Consideration of FISA Update
Washington, DC – Congresswoman Heather Wilson continues to highlight the urgent national security need to allow American agencies to listen to foreigners in foreign countries without a warrant, and said a letter from the Director of National Intelligence emphasizes the need to immediately update the FISA law so that intelligence agencies can prevent terrorist attacks.
Wilson, Ranking Republican on the House Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, introduced a bill earlier this week that would fix the problem. The narrowly crafted proposal focuses on just one aspect of the outdated FISA law and would not impact the civil liberties of Americans in any way. Wilson said that despite the continued necessity to completely overhaul the 1978 law, this problem is too important for any delay.
Today, for the third time this week, Wilson used procedural efforts in an attempt to force the House leadership to consider this critical security issue. She said this simple fix to the law is “absolutely critical” and that already “American lives have been imperiled.”
“The danger is too real to continue to ignore this problem,” Wilson said. “We cannot continue to cover the eyes and ears of our intelligence agencies while our enemies use the communications systems we built to plot to kill us.”
On May 1, 2007, in unclassified session in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Admiral Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence urged the Congress to modernize this law. He stated, “We are actually missing a significant portion of what we should be getting.”
On July 25, 2007, the Director of National Intelligence wrote to the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and stated, “we are significantly burdened in capturing overseas communications of foreign terrorists planning to conduct attacks inside the United States.” He went on to state, “in a significant number of cases, we are in the unfortunate position of having to obtain court orders to effectively collect foreign intelligence about foreign targets located overseas.” Director McConnell told us that, “it is necessary and essential that Congress modernized FISA. Let me also emphasize that Congress’s providing additional resources to the Executive Branch will not remedy intelligence gap.”
Wilson said the leadership of both parties, and every member of the House Intelligence Committee knows that the FISA law is not working. Congress must fix the law.
“Intelligence is the first line of defense in the war on terror,” she said. “There is no political excuse that justifies continued failure to provide our intelligence community with the ability to monitor terrorists overseas.”
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