Expiration of the Protect America Act

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, we have been joined by my colleague from Texas, who is one of the few Members of this House who has direct experience in working with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when he worked for the Justice Department.

I would be happy to yield to him.

Mr. McCAUL of Texas. I thank the gentlewoman from New Mexico for your great leadership on this very important issue and for having this debate tonight.

I think we are denying democracy its voice by not allowing the Members who represent the American people the opportunity to vote on the Protect America Act and to make that act permanent.

As the gentlewoman mentioned, I do have experience in the Justice Department in this area. I applied for FISA warrants while I was there. This statute was never intended to apply to overseas intelligence. It was solely intended to apply to agents of a foreign power who were in the United States.

This is a very dangerous game, and it's probably the most important debate that I've seen since I have been elected to the Congress. By allowing the Protect America Act to expire, by walking away from this Chamber 10 days ago and doing nothing about that, we see what the consequences are. We have heard the letters from the Director of Intelligence, from the Attorney General, and the failure now to be able to capture critical intelligence overseas.

In fact, some estimates are as high as 66 percent. In other words, we are going dark now in parts of the world where we should be paying attention. This is a dangerous game of politics; in my view it is partisan politics at its worst.

We are literally putting Americans at risk. The most solemn obligation we have as Members of Congress is to protect the American people. And there is a reason why since September 11 we haven't seen a September 11.

Intelligence is the best weapon we have, as the gentlewoman has mentioned, in this war on terror. And the idea that somehow when American soldiers are kidnapped in Iraq overseas by al Qaeda and yet we are denied the opportunity to listen in because we have to get lawyered up, and we have to go through the FISA Court to get that emergency warrant, and in the meantime one soldier is killed and two we have not heard from since, really saddens my heart as an American. And I believe, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania said, we are derelict in our responsibilities.

I want to share with the gentlewoman an editorial, an op-ed that I wrote with Admiral Bobby Inman. Why is Admiral Inman important? He was the Director of National Intelligence, the Deputy Director of the CIA under both Democrat and Republican administrations. Admiral Inman was one of the principal authors of the FISA statute. And in this editorial he says, to apply FISA to monitoring foreign communications, a suspected terrorist operating overseas such as Osama bin Laden and other key al Qaeda leaders, turns the original intent of FISA on its head. Turns the original intent of FISA on its head.

That is what a few key leaders on the other side of the aisle have done. By not allowing us to vote, they know that it would pass. It passed overwhelmingly in the Senate in a bipartisan way. And he goes on to say, contrary to some of the rhetoric coming from the Democrats, it is the members of al Qaeda, not American citizens, who are the target of these intelligence-gathering activities.

I submit the question, don't you think that most Americans want us to be listening to what al Qaeda is saying overseas? Don't you think most Americans want to hear the conversations that we know they are having, because this is a long-term struggle, and we know that they are planning to attack us again? Don't the American people want us to be listening to that? And yet by failing to make this Protect America Act permanent, we are denying that opportunity.

If I can just by saying that if, God forbid, something happens between now and the time we can finally get this body together to pass this act, and American blood is spilled, that blood will be on the hands of all Members of Congress. We need to get this act passed.