By Congressman Joe Pitts

Imagine yourself as the CEO of a large telecommunications company in the United States.  The date is September 21, 2001.  Just two weeks earlier you watched in horror as the news showed images of burning, collapsed buildings in the wake of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the nation’s history.

A call comes in from the Attorney General’s office of the United States.  The U.S. government needs the help of the large telecommunications companies.  In an effort to track down the perpetrators of the terrorist attack, and ensure another attack is not eminent, the investigators need access to certain electronic communications.  You check with your legal counsel’s office and are told that if the Attorney General certifies specific legal requirements, then you are within legal boundaries to allow the access.

Now six years later you find yourself involved in a legal battle, unable to defend yourself in public because the government has asserted state secrets privilege with regard to the case.  And yet, in Congress, Democrat leaders refuse to pass a long term reauthorization of the bill that governs electronic surveillance abroad because it contains a measure that would provide your company, and others like it, immunity from the charges brought against it in court.
   
Six months ago, the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell told Congress that our nation’s intelligence surveillance laws were out of date with 21st century technology, and it was hampering the ability of our intelligence services to execute the war on terror.  We needed a new law that would, as Senator Ted Kennedy said in drafting the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), “reach some kind of fair balance that will protect the security of the United States without infringing on our citizens’ human liberties and rights.”

In response, Congress passed the Protect America Act on August 4, 2007, which closed the terrorist loophole in our surveillance activities for six months in order to give Congress time to come up with a long term reauthorization of the 30 year-old FISA program.  The Protect America Act would allow our intelligence services to intercept electronic communications from known terror suspects outside the United States making calls into the United Sates without a court order.
 
Six months passed without Democratic leaders in either the Senate or the House taking up meaningful legislation to come to a long term solution for the program.  On Thursday, January 31, the six month extension ran out.  Democratic leaders in the House wanted a 30 day extension; the Senate could not even agree to that.  The White House correctly argued that intelligence tools should not be provided for the same way one pays rent, on a month-to-month basis.  The Democrats had six months to come up with a solution and they could not.  What would an additional month provide?

The cynical answer is that it would provide one more month for judges and lawyers to proceed with a legal case against one of the nation’s telecommunications companies that is accused of cooperating with the Federal government in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.  The proposed legislation in Congress to fix FISA contains a provision that would grant immunity to the patriotic companies that acted as good corporate citizens and answered the federal government’s request for assistance.

Congress ended up passing a 15 day extension on January 30, so that our intelligence community is not prohibited from doing its job while Congress attempts to do its job.
 
The lack of action in passing FISA legislation appears negligent when one considers we have voted eight times on SCHIP legislation over the last six months.  Instead, Democrat leaders waited until the last possible moment and then just extended the temporary fix another two weeks.

Companies that patriotically served our country as good corporate citizens may now be beholden to unscrupulous trial lawyers.  By continuing to delay the passage of this bill, Democrats in Congress are choosing to side with trial lawyers over our intelligence community.  We should not be playing games with our intelligence gathering capabilities.

Congressman Joe Pitts represents the 16^th Congressional District of Pennsylvania.

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