WASHINGTON — A battle over legal immunity for telecommunication companies that participated in a controversial Bush administration counterterrorism surveillance program landed on the Senate floor Thursday, after the Judiciary Committee voted to preserve protections for companies that help the government.
The outcome in the Senate represents a procedural defeat for lawmakers and outside groups that opposed giving the companies immunity from lawsuits alleging privacy violations, but it leaves open the possibility of a bruising floor fight on the provision.
Separately, the House voted 227-189 Thursday night to pass Democratic- sponsored bill that would deny immunity to companies while expanding court oversight of surveillance conducted outside the United States.
The wrangling is part of congressional efforts to rewrite the law that governs clandestine surveillance, called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, because of revelations that the Bush administration conducted a long-term warrantless surveillance program without court oversight. A temporary rewrite passed in August is due to expire in February.
Roughly 40 privacy lawsuits are pending against several of the nation’s largest and more influential telecommunications companies.
President Bush says the telecom firms that helped the U.S. government with its surveillance programs should not be threatened by lawsuits and has vowed to veto any legislation that does not include retroactive legal immunity.
The Senate intelligence committee, with support from key Democrats and approval from the administration, has passed a proposal that includes such protections.
During a tumultuous day-long meeting Thursday, the judiciary panel – which had the intelligence bill before it – voted 10-9 along party lines to approve amendments that added new restrictions on government surveillance powers. But its version did not include language addressing the immunity issue.
The committee defeated in a 12-7 vote a proposed amendment from Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., that would have stripped legal immunity from the bill.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Herb Kohl, D-Wis.; and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., joined nine Republicans in voting to preserve the provision.
The panel’s chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who voted against the immunity, said in a statement that “passing a law to whitewash the administration’s undermining of another law would be a disservice to the American people and to the rule of law.”
Committee Republicans grumbled that the committee did not, in the end, decide the immunity matter directly in the version it passed to the Senate floor. Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, also complained that the overall bill would “gut our critical terrorist early warning system” and would end up “handcuffing our terror-fighters.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has not signaled his position on the proposals, will decide how the competing provisions will be handled on the floor.
“In the end, there’s going to be an open-ended debate on immunity,” said Reid spokesman Jim Manley, who said he expects the issue will be considered on the floor in early December.
