Projo Politics Blog

WASHINGTON -- The Senate has not finished retooling the law that governs foreign intelligence surveillance, so Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has until after the Fourth of July recess to decide whether he’ll vote for it -- despite his opposition to a clause that would shield the phone companies from lawsuits over their role in President Bush’s warrantless wiretap program.

Immunity for telecommunications companies is easily the most controversial aspect of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA in the shorthand of Capitol Hill. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has assailed it as a "get out of jail free card’’ for the companies. Some civil liberties groups have used stronger language than that.

"This so-called compromise lets AT&T, Verizon and the entire Bush administration off the hook for lying to Americans and illegally tapping our phone calls,’’ one such organization, Democracy for America, said in a statement against the bill.

But Whitehouse said this week that immunity "really isn’t the only issue.’’ He said, “This is a large and comprehensive bill that solves a whole variety of other problems,” including language that he worked on to protect the rights of Americans caught up in overseas surveillance.

Whitehouse stressed that he is still undecided, but said such provisions might spur him to support the bill, even if an amendment by Feingold fails to strip out the immunity provision.

If Whitehouse does support the bill, he’d been in good company, President Bush, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell have all called for its passage. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate -- on record opposing the immunity clause -- recently decided to support the bill.

When the measure passed the House last week, Rep. James R. Langevin voted for it and Rep. Patrick J Kennedy voted against. Both Whitehouse and Sen. Jack Reed voted with a Senate majority earlier this week to limit debate on the bill -- a key test that permits it to be considered and voted on after Congress comes back from recess.

Whitehouse is a member of the Intelligence and the Judiciary Committee -- the two panels that shared jurisdiction in drafting the bill.

-- John E. Mulligan, Journal Washington Bureau

---