Hoekstra Urges Bush to Impart Intelligence Details
"It is not optional . . . not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed," Rep. Peter Hoekstra said. Photo Credit: Getty Images Photo
By Charles Babington Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 10, 2006; Page A07
The Bush administration briefed top lawmakers on a significant intelligence program only after a key Republican committee chairman angrily complained of being left in the dark, the chairman said yesterday.
House intelligence committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) would not describe the program, but he said it was significant enough that the administration should have briefed him and others voluntarily, without waiting for them to learn of it through government tipsters.
"There was at least one major -- what I consider significant -- activity that we had not been briefed on that we have now been briefed on," Hoekstra said on "Fox News Sunday." "Some people within the intelligence community brought to my attention some programs that they believed we had not been briefed on. They were right."
Hoekstra said the briefings took place after he complained in a May 18 letter to President Bush of hearing about "alleged Intelligence Community activities" not described to committee members in classified briefings. "If these allegations are true," he wrote to Bush, "they may represent a breach of responsibility by the Administration, a violation of law and . . . a direct affront to me and the Members of this committee."
Yesterday, Hoekstra appeared mollified. But he said he still believes the administration falls short of its legal obligations to brief key congressional members on significant intelligence operations.
"I wanted to reinforce to the president and to the executive branch and the intelligence community how important, and by law the requirement, that they keep the legislative branch informed of what they are doing," he said. "It is not optional for this president or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing."
Numerous Democrats and civil liberties groups have alleged that the administration ignores laws involving due process and congressional notification in conducting surveillance and intelligence programs in the name of fighting terrorism. Until Hoekstra's May 18 letter was disclosed Saturday by the New York Times, the most prominent Republican questioning the administration's tactics was Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
Hoekstra's remarks left unclear the nature of the intelligence programs he alluded to in his letter. He did not specify whether they involved domestic surveillance, a contentious area in which newspapers have reported about programs involving warrantless wiretaps, extensive gathering of phone records and monitoring of international bank transactions. Hoekstra, like many other GOP lawmakers, has defended the programs as important tools in combating terrorism, and he has resisted Democrats' calls for full inquiries into the programs' legality.
Hoekstra also had shown deep interest in an April report by the National Ground Intelligence Center regarding 500 chemical munitions shells that Iranian troops had buried in the 1980s, which were uncovered in 2004. Hoekstra and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) have said the shells justify claims that deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but the administration has not embraced those assertions. On June 29, Hoekstra complained in a letter to Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte about an administration background briefing for reporters that played down the shells' significance.
Sources said yesterday that they believe Hoekstra did not hear of the report on the shells until after he wrote to Bush.
An aide to Hoekstra said he could not elaborate on the chairman's letter to Bush or his remarks yesterday. The chairman did not respond to a request for an interview.
Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in a statement that she agrees with Hoekstra that "vigorous congressional oversight is impossible unless the administration shares critical information with the appropriate committees of Congress."
FBI plans new Net-tapping push Saturday, July 8th, 2006
Declan McCullagh
The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned.
FBI Agent Barry Smith distributed the proposal at a private meeting last Friday with industry representatives and indicated it would be introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.
The draft bill would place the FBI’s Net-surveillance push on solid legal footing. At the moment, it’s ensnared in a legal challenge from universities and some technology companies that claim the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband surveillance directives exceed what Congress has authorized.
The FBI claims that expanding the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is necessary to thwart criminals and terrorists who have turned to technologies like voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.
“The complexity and variety of communications technologies have dramatically increased in recent years, and the lawful intercept capabilities of the federal, state and local law enforcement community have been under continual stress, and in many cases have decreased or become impossible,” according to a summary accompanying the draft bill.
Complicating the political outlook for the legislation is an ongoing debate over allegedly illegal surveillance by the National Security Administration–punctuated by several lawsuits challenging it on constitutional grounds and an unrelated proposal to force Internet service providers to record what Americans are doing online. One source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of last Friday’s meeting, said the FBI viewed its CALEA expansion as a top congressional priority for 2007.
Breaking the legislation down The 27-page proposed CALEA amendments seen by CNET News.com would:
• Require any manufacturer of “routing” and “addressing” hardware to offer upgrades or other “modifications” that are needed to support Internet wiretapping. Current law does require that of telephone switch manufacturers–but not makers of routers and network address translation hardware like Cisco Systems and 2Wire.
• Authorize the expansion of wiretapping requirements to “commercial” Internet services including instant messaging if the FCC deems it to be in the “public interest.” That would likely sweep in services such as in-game chats offered by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming system as well.
• Force Internet service providers to sift through their customers’ communications to identify, for instance, only VoIP calls. (The language requires companies to adhere to “processing or filtering methods or procedures applied by a law enforcement agency.”) That means police could simply ask broadband providers like AT&T, Comcast or Verizon for wiretap info–instead of having to figure out what VoIP service was being used.
• Eliminate the current legal requirement saying the Justice Department must publish a public “notice of the actual number of communications interceptions” every year. That notice currently also must disclose the “maximum capacity” required to accommodate all of the legally authorized taps that government agencies will “conduct and use simultaneously.”
Jim Harper, a policy analyst at the free-market Cato Institute and member of a Homeland Security advisory board, said the proposal would “have a negative impact on Internet users’ privacy.”
“People expect their information to be private unless the government meets certain legal standards,” Harper said. “Right now the Department of Justice is pushing the wrong way on all this.”
Neither the FBI nor DeWine’s office responded to a request for comment Friday afternoon.
DeWine has relatively low approval ratings–47 percent, according to SurveyUSA.com–and is enmeshed in a fierce battle with a Democratic challenger to retain his Senate seat in the November elections. DeWine is a member of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee charged with overseeing electronic privacy and antiterrorism enforcement and is a former prosecutor in Ohio.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., decided 2-1 last month to uphold the FCC’s extension of CALEA to broadband providers, and it’s not clear what will happen next with the lawsuit. Judge Harry Edwards wrote in his dissent that the majority’s logic gave the FCC “unlimited authority to regulate every telecommunications service that might conceivably be used to assist law enforcement.”
The organizations behind the lawsuit say Congress never intended CALEA to force broadband providers–and networks at corporations and universities–to build in central surveillance hubs for the police. The list of organizations includes Sun Microsystems, Pulver.com, the American Association of Community Colleges, the Association of American Universities and the American Library Association.
If the FBI’s legislation becomes law, it would derail the lawsuit because there would no longer be any question that Congress intended CALEA to apply to the Internet.
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