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Bush jawbones Democrats on surveillance

WASHINGTON (CBS/AP) – President Bush said that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners.

“So far the Democrats in Congress have not drafted a bill I can sign,” Bush said at FBI headquarters, where he was meeting with counterterror and homeland security officials. “We’ve worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk. Time is short.”

The president said lawmakers cannot leave for their August recess this weekend as planned unless they “pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States.”

Bush has the authority under the Constitution to call Congress back into session once it has recessed or adjourned, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perrino said talk of him doing that is premature.

“We cannot imagine that Congress would leave without fixing the problem,” she said.

As of early afternoon, however, it was clear that no deal was imminent.


President Bush accompanied by VP Dick Cheney, makes comments after meeting with the Counterterrorism Team at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building . (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

“It’s up in the air; I think we’re going to be here for awhile,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said upon emerging from a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats on the issue.

Sen. Kit Bond, top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said the White House’s offer included several concessions; among them to let the plan expire in six months, giving lawmakers time to work out a more comprehensive law.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell “has put on the table this last best offer,” Bond said.

Earlier Friday, the White House offered an eleventh-hour accord to Democrats in the negotiations over the matter, saying it would agree to a court review of its foreign intelligence activities instead of leaving certification up to the attorney general and director of national intelligence.

But it attached several conditions that could be unacceptable to Democrats: that the review would only be after-the-fact and would only involve the administration’s general process of collecting the intelligence, not individual cases, said a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss internal deliberations.

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The FISA court review would happen 120 days after the surveillance began, another senior administration official said. Until then, McConnell and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would oversee and approve the process of targeting foreign terrorists, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing negotiations.

The administration is demanding that this apply to monitoring of all foreign targets, no matter whether they end up communicating with another foreigner or someone in the U.S, and no matter whether they are a suspected terrorist or a target for some other reason.

Democrats leery of Gonzales’ involvement said that seemed far too long a period of time before the FISA court could step in.

Bush said that he would judge any bill sent to him by one measure alone: McConnell’s judgment as to whether it provides “what you need to prevent an attack on the country.”

“If the answer’s ‘no,’ I’m going to veto the bill,” Bush said.

GOP’s Boehner Leaked Classified Info? ◊ by Steven D

Did the GOP Minority Leader in the House really leak classified information in order to help the Bush administration negotiate an amendment to the FISA law? How could that be? I’m sure we’ll soon learn that the Vice President must have secretly declassified this before Boehner talked to FOX News about it …

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."