Senator Jay Rockefeller's "Bipartisan Compromise" On FISA Legislation
October 20, 2007 -- 10:31 AM EST // //
The New York Times has piece today offering a long overview of the months-long process by which the Senate intelligence committee reached its just-announced compromise on the Senate FISA cave-in legislation containing immunity for the telecoms.
It's a pretty useful overview, because it gives us new info revealing conclusively just what a cruel, sick joke it is to describe this as "bipartisan" or as a "compromise."
The piece sets the table for the tale of the cave-in by opening with Senator Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Dem on the committee, who supposedly got really, really tough with Veep Cheney in a private conversation many months ago:
Last June, in a phone conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney, John D. Rockefeller IV, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, set down his conditions for revising the law governing the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping. Only when the committee got access to secret administration documents authorizing surveillance without court warrants, Mr. Rockefeller told the vice president, would it consider such legislation.Rockefeller ended up getting access to some of the docs he wanted, but as we already know, they were chosen by the White House, and thanks to this piece, we learn that it actually gets more ludicrous than this. The Times says that administration officials claim that Rockefeller got the access to the docs because he agreed to leave telecom immunity in the bill before seeing them. And no one -- not Rockefeller, not The Times -- appears to object here to this version of events.
It gets still worse. The paper reveals that Rockefeller largely ceded the role of negotiating this with the White House to his Republican counterpart on the intel committee -- that would be the ranking minority member:
The White House negotiated the bill primarily through Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the leading Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a staunch ally in efforts to broaden the N.S.A.’s wiretapping authority. Officials said that while Mr. Rockefeller had had some direct dealings with the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and other administration officials, it was Mr. Bond who had acted as the main liaison to the White House on the issue.The resulting bill, as The Times put it in an editorial today, is "a Potemkin compromise that endorsed far too much of the bad summer law" -- a law that Rockefeller himself was previously "dissatisfied" with. Nonetheless, in the final insult:
In the end...Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Bond interrupted each other to praise the committee’s bipartisan effort.So let's review. According to The Times, The White House chose what docs Rockefeller got to see -- after Rockefeller agreed to let telecom immunity stay in the bill. The ranking Republican on the committee did the lion's share of the negotiating with the White House to produce the final bill. And the final product has many of the same cave-in features that last August's version had.
And then, after all that, Rockefeller threw his arm around Kit Bond's shoulders and the two did a little Rockettes act together, kicking up their feet in unison as they cheerfully sang precisely the song about "bipartisan compromise" that the White House and the GOP wants everyone to hear.
To reach the homepage of this blog, click here. Comments section temporarily disabled.