Fight over NSA snooping, Patriot Act goes down to wire

Senators on Friday raced their own holiday-imposed deadline for preserving key Patriot Act powers, with Democrats accusing Republican leaders of trying to force a choice between having to back the NSA’s controversial bulk collection powers or else letting other wiretapping and lone-wolf terrorism tools expire.

But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican trying to force the choice, said the blame instead lies with an Obama administration ready to scrap the National Security Agency’s phone-snooping program without having a viable backup in place.

“This is beyond troubling,” Mr. McConnell said, reading out President Obama’s own words last year defending the NSA program’s capabilities as “critical” to the fight against terrorists, and wondering what changed between then and now, when Mr. Obama has called on Congress to scrap the Patriot Act’s bulk collection powers, which would end the NSA program.

Mr. Obama could end the program himself, but has refused so far to do so, instead demanding Capitol Hill do it through legislation. House lawmakers, on a bipartisan basis, have agreed, passing the USA Freedom Act, which would prohibit government bulk data collection. That bill passed 338-88 with the blessing of House Speaker John A. Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

But Mr. McConnell has stood in their way in the Senate, fighting to preserve bulk collection and the NSA program. He put off a debate over the House bill until the last minute, with key Patriot Act powers set to expire at the end of this month, and with senators hoping to be gone on a Memorial Day vacation next week.

Mr. McConnell planned to bring up the USA Freedom Act and, if it fell short of the 60 votes usually needed to pass big bills in the Senate, he was going to insist lawmakers pass a short-term extension of the Patriot Act.

His gambit may have backfired, though. A number of Democrats said Mr. McConnell had plenty of time to have a full debate, and instead shunted it off until the last minute. They said the USA Freedom Act is more popular than the extension, and demanded the Senate pass that, instead.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest would not say Friday whether President Obama would accept a short-term extension of the current law, but he said they would prefer the USA Freedom Act pass.

“We’ve got people in the United States Senate who are playing chicken with this,” he said, calling it “grossly irresponsible.”

The NSA program has been controversial since even before it was publicly revealed by former government contractor Edward Snowden.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seemed to mislead the country when in open testimony to Congress he denied the government was scooping up any kinds of records on millions of Americans.

In the two years since Mr. Snowden revealed the program, repeated reviews have found it to be ineffective. In the latest audit by the Justice Department Inspector General, FBI agents couldn’t point to a single plot that has been foiled thanks to bulk data collection.

But defenders say the information adds context to investigations, and said there haven’t been any intentional abuses, so it’s not violating liberties.

The USA Freedom Act includes a six-month transition period to let the NSA set up a replacement program that would presumably rely on telephone companies stories metadata — the numbers, dates and durations of calls — themselves, and then making it available to government agents when they want to query it.

Mr. McConnell, though, said the administration admits that depends on the companies cooperating — something some companies have said they wouldn’t do unless they got liability protections. Mr. McConnell also mocked a promise by the administration to report back if it finds the new law is hampering terrorism investigations, calling that a “cynical” effort.

“At a moment of elevated threat it would be a mistake to take from our intelligence community any of the valuable tools needed to build a complete picture of terrorist networks and their plans,” Mr. McConnell said.

One option being floated Friday was to create a longer transition period.

But Mr. Earnest called that “not just unnecessary, but irresponsible.”