How the Fight for Vast New Spying Powers Was Won

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/11/AR2007081101349.html?hpid=moreheadlines


How the Fight for Vast New Spying Powers Was Won

By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 12, 2007; A01

For three days, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, had haggled with congressional leaders over amendments to a federal surveillance law, but now he was putting his foot down. "This is the issue," said the plain-spoken retired vice admiral and Vietnam veteran, "that makes my blood pressure rise."

.........

McConnell won the fight, extracting a key concession despite the misgivings of Democratic negotiators. Shortly after that exchange, the Bush administration leveraged Democratic acquiescence into a broader victory: congressional approval of a Republican bill that would expand surveillance powers far beyond what Democratic leaders had initially been willing to accept.

Yet both sides acknowledge that the administration's resurrection of virtually unchecked Cold War-era power to surveil foreign targets without warrants may be only temporary. The law expires in 180 days, and Democrats, smarting from their political defeat, have promised to alter it with new legislation to be prepared next month, when Congress returns from its recess.

"The real train wreck happens in September," said a senior administration official involved in the negotiations with Congress. He was referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's declaration hours after the bill's passage that portions are "unacceptable" and that the public will not want to wait six months "before corrective action is taken."

[robinlynne]

1. that 20 minute fight? to hand over a chunk of the constitution? that one?