Behind the FISA Flop

[Joanne98]

Behind the FISA Flop

Why wasn't there greater mobilization against the warrantless surveillance bill passed earlier this month? A look at what Congressional Democrats, advocacy groups, and the netroots were doing in the run-up to the bill's passage.

Art Levine | August 31, 2007 | web only
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=behind_the_fisa_flop


Monday's resignation announcement by discredited Attorney General Alberto Gonzales threw into even sharper relief the capitulation in early August by the Democratic-led Congress on one of Fredo's signature issues, the warrantless surveillance of Americans.
The fallout over the passage of the bill that expands the president's surveillance powers has prompted a new rift between progressives and the Democratic leadership. Blunt ACLU attack ads launched last week charge that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acted like "sheep." The disenchantment with Congressional Democrats continues although Pelosi stated right after the administration's revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill passed the House that she'd seek major changes to the "unacceptable" legislation when Congress returns in September. She and other leaders have also tried to mollify critics by saying it was only a six-month extension.

But the Democrats' weakness on this issue raises questions about the ability of progressive organizations and bloggers to work together effectively -- and quickly -- to mobilize opposition to the administration's extremist legislative proposals or to halt its abuses, despite Bush's Nixon-like approval ratings.

By now everyone from The New York Times editorial page to the bloggers on DailyKos have denounced Democrats for being cowardly, spineless, and weak on the FISA bill. (Although some, such as Matt Stoller of OpenLeft, say most party leaders don't really care about civil liberties.) Still, the steady failures of Congressional Democrats to stand up to the Bush administration on everything from the draconian Military Commissions Act to Iraq War deadlines makes it clear that activists must do a far better job of helping to ensure that Congress won't be stream-rolled yet again by the administration's mau-mauing on the "War on Terror."

A total of 41 Democrats in the House and Senate approved the administration's "shameful" eavesdropping program. After the vote, according to The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne, Congress was deluged with about 200,000 angry e-mails and phone calls, fueled in part by a Moveon.org e-mail alert bemoaning the passage of the legislation. The 200,000 complaints may sound like a lot, but they came too late to halt a major assault on civil liberties. In contrast, earlier this year when fans of Web radio faced the loss of their favorite programming because of a threatened rise in royalty rates, they deluged Congress with over a million e-mails and phone calls. The effort, ably organized by SaveNetRadio.org, came before the higher royalty rates were scheduled to be imposed. So why didn't progressive groups and the highly-touted blogosphere mobilize in a similar manner to stop a measure that could potentially destroy the privacy of Americans?

The Democrats may have shown too much trust in the Bush administration after being stampeded into negotiations over the shape of the FISA bill, but the experienced activist groups and sophisticated bloggers largely were, in turn, blindsided by the Democrats' willingness to give the administration virtually unlimited power to seize records and eavesdrop on Americans communicating with foreigners. Caroline Fredrickson, the legislative director of the ACLU, is still fuming over the way Democrats reneged on reassurances she says they offered in late July to liberal groups -- particularly at a key meeting on July 20 -- that they wouldn't move any major revisions to the current FISA law before getting the answers they sought about the current warrantless wiretapping program.

"They turned around and screwed us over -- and the Constitution -- all at once," she says of the fast-moving FISA legislation that left the ACLU and other groups scrambling to stop it. In addition, as Fredrickson pointed out in a letter responding to criticisms (since retracted) by Stoller of OpenLeft that the ACLU did little to stop the bill, "Pelosi and friends spent the entire week negotiating with the and cut out ALL the civil liberties groups -- not just the ACLU…They did not listen to us. It was dem leadership who scheduled the vote on these particular bills. Why be mad at us and not at them?"

ACLU lobbyists and communications staff did their best to play catch-up on the FISA revisions before Congress recessed in August. The organization's first prescient press release -- largely ignored -- came on Saturday, July 28, and denounced the president's radio address asking to "modernize" the FISA law with warrantless eavesdropping on foreigners overseas. (Bush didn't mention Americans being targeted, of course.) But the ACLU's staff wasn't much worried about the Democratic-led Congress going along with the president's push to gut FISA until Rep. Jane Harmon (D-CA), the centrist chair of a House intelligence subcommittee, revealed on Sunday's CNN's Late Edition show that the Democrats were going to move their own, somewhat more moderate FISA bill, which still significantly weakened court oversight of proposed sweeping eavesdropping powers.

Fredrickson recalls seeing the show and saying to herself, "Uh-oh." She adds, "We started lobbying like crazy" early the next week, but while still being kept in the dark about the details....Continued>>>>
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=behind_the_fisa_flop