Projo Politics Blog

WASHINGTON -- Rhode Island's Senate delegation split today as the Senate voted overwhelmingly for an overhaul of the nation's foreign intelligence-gathering system, giving President Bush a hard-fought victory on the question of legal immunity for telecommunications companies that helped him to conduct a secret program of warrantless surveillance after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who has been an outspoken critic of the administration's warrantless wiretap program, voted with the majority that - like the Bush administration - favored the intelligence overhaul, a compromise hammered out over the course of many months and several impasses.

Sen. Jack Reed, a fellow Democrat, joined the minority in opposition to the bill, which passed on a 69 to 28 vote.

Both Rhode Islanders voted for a series of amendments that failed, including one that would have killed the provision that will effectively protect the "telecom'' companies from lawsuits over their role in the wiretap program.

Whitehouse, who had supported the bill in a key test vote before the July 4 Senate recess, said at the time, "This is a large and comprehensive bill that solves a whole variety of problems.'' He had played a role, for example, in drafting a provision to safeguard the rights of Americans overseas who are inadvertently caught up in government eavesdropping on telephone and e-mail traffic among suspected terrorists.

The bill is very much a political compromise, brought about by a deadline: Wiretapping orders authorized last year will begin to expire in August. Without a new bill, the government would go back to old FISA rules, requiring multiple new orders and potential delays to continue those intercepts. That is something most of Congress did not want to see happen, particularly in an election year.

-- John E. Mulligan, Journal Washington bureau, with Associated Press reports

 Tags  Reed surveillance legislation Whitehouse

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