KENNEDY RESPONDS TO DNI'S REMARKS ON RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY FOR TELECOMS
In an interview today with National Public Radio, the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, said that his top priority on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the administration's warrantless surveillance program. The issue is not modernizing FISA, McConnell said. "The issue is liability protection for the private sector. We can't do this mission without their help."
Similarly, the DNI published an editorial in today's Washington Post claiming that if Congress does not grant retroactive immunity to the telecoms, "it will severely degrade the capabilities of our Intelligence Community to carry out its core missions of providing warning and protecting the country."
As I've explained before, this argument is dishonest and self-serving. It's nothing more than a scare tactic designed to avoid legal and political accountability and keep Americans in the dark about the administration's massive lawbreaking.
Retroactive immunity for the telecoms would undermine the rule of law, the integrity of our justice system, and the entire structure of FISAwithout doing anything to protect national security. The DNI said that allowing these lawsuits to proceed might jeopardize security by deterring phone companies from future cooperation with surveillance requests. This is sheer nonsense. Under FISA, companies already have absolute immunity for any lawful cooperation. Future companies will be deterred only from cooperating with illegal surveillance requests, which is the whole point of the law
The DNI also claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee looked at the telecoms' actions and determined that "there was no violation of law." That is simply falsethe Committee never made any such determination. Moreover, in America it is the courts, not congressional committees, that decide whether laws have been broken. If in fact the telecoms did not break the law, then they should have nothing to fear from the lawsuits.
The DNI's latest comments show yet again the shamelessness of the administration's tactics. The President has said that Americans will die if Congress does not make major changes to FISA. But he has also vowed to veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity. So if we take him at his word, the President is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies. That is a position that should outrage every American. The President's and the DNI's insistence on immunity as a precondition for any FISA reform is yet another example of their contempt for honest dialogue and for the rule of law.