Sept. 15, 2006 – 7:46 p.m.
President Bush is certainly right about one thing: The administration’s global war on terror would be in for a big overhaul if the Democrats have their way in November.
From NSA wiretaps, to the limits of interrogation, to the trials of Guantanamo prisoners, Congress could well force the White House to eat spinach across a broad table of counterterrorism policies if the Democrats take over Capitol Hill next January.
Last week’s congressional turmoil over the treatment of al Qaeda suspects — with
The handcuffs Democrats are readying for the administration’s warrantless eavesdropping programs, for example, were previewed two weeks ago during a hearing of a House Judiciary Subcommittee.
Venerable Michigan Democrat John Conyers, who could be gavelling the Judiciary Committee into order in his 43rd year in Congress next January, was trying to pin down administration officials on exactly what bugs them about getting warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which issued 1,800 subpoenas last year without a squawk.
“In a word — in two words — speed and agility,” Steve Bradbury, the Justice Department’s acting assistant attorney general, said at the Sept. 9 hearing. “The need for speed and agility.”
“Layers of lawyers,” Bradbury maintained, prevent the administration from swiftly getting warrants on terror suspects.
But, Conyers retorted, Justice Department lawyers have three days to wiretap without a warrant under current law.
“That’s not speedy enough?”
Not really, said Bradbury, a lawyer.
How about seven days, Conyers offered. Would that help?
Bradbury looked pained.
Lawyers aren’t the only problem, said another administration witness, from the National Security Agency, which rakes through billions of conversations and e-mails daily, looking for hints of terrorist connections.
“My concern is analyst time,” NSA general counsel Robert Dietz said. “And . . . counterterrorism experts and analysts do not grow on trees. And every time I’ve got 10 or 15 or 20 counterterrorism experts working [on warrant requests], that’s time when they’re not trying to stop the enemies of the United States.”
Conyers, who entered Congress in 1964, pounced on the bureaucrats.
“Well, thank you very much,” he said.
Conyers told Bradbury about a measure [HR 537] recently offered by Rep.
“And,” Conyers said, “it appropriates whatever funds are necessary to make sure the Justice Department can seek as many court wiretapping orders as they see fit.”
All the money and lawyers you need, in other words, Conyers said. A measure in the Senate, from California Democrat
“Do you have any objections to any of those provisions?” Conyers asked.
On second thought, Bradbury said, more lawyers won’t do the trick.
“We think simply adding more lawyers and more bureaucracy and more money is not the answer for the need for speed and agility in this program,” he said.
That was too much for Massachusetts Democrat
“I feel like I’m being played,” he said.
Delahunt had been trying, without success, to get the Republican-run committee to subpoena the Justice Department for details on the wiretap programs. He hadn’t even been able to force the Justice Department to submit a request for money and personnel to carry out the program.
“We don’t know nothing,” he groused. “We know nothing about the program. We know nothing about even whether there has been communication between the Department of Justice and this committee.”
“What do you need?” he pressed Bradbury later. “There’s nobody here on this panel that won’t give you the tools that you need, whether it’s seven days, 14 days. Let’s discuss them.”
After a while, the administration officials packed up their briefcases and left, unscathed.
Administration officials haven’t had that luxury with regard to torturing and prosecuting al Qaeda suspects, because they’ve been ambushed from their own ranks.
While Republicans could casually diss Democrats as traitors for advocating due process and the humane treatment of prisoners, they can’t pin such a label on their own. Especially when the Senate rebels are led by a war hero who was tortured in captivity, a former secretary of the Navy who heads the Armed Services Committee, a prosecutor in the Air Force Reserve, and the chairwoman of the committee that oversees Homeland Security.
Any chance of that evaporated when Colin Powell, the Army general, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president’s own secretary of State went public with his own opposition to Bush. Unilaterally lowering the gold standard for the treatment of combatants, agreed upon by virtually all the world’s government S 60 years ago, Powell said, was a terrible idea.
“The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” Powell’s letter to Bush said. “To redefine Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Convention] would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.”
With such heavy artillery reinforcing their position, the chances that Sens. McCain, Warner, Graham and Collins could save the White House from an even bigger public relations hari-kiri were improving. At week’s end there was not much doubt that they could scare up another half dozen votes from northeastern Republicans.
But what would they win? Nothing more than satisfaction that they’d stopped the other guys on the goal line as the clock ran out.
The Senate Democrats last week scouted the feuding Republicans from the sidelines. They learned that, if they get the ball back in January, the Republican rebels will be there to help fashion their war agenda. And they will be able to thank
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.