House fails to renew surveillance measure

WASHINGTON — The House broke for a week's recess Thursday without renewing terrorist surveillance authority demanded by President Bush, leading him to warn of risky intelligence gaps while Democrats accused him of reckless fearmongering.

The refusal of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to schedule a vote on a surveillance measure approved by the Senate on Tuesday touched off an intense partisan conflict over the national-security questions that have colored federal elections since 2002 and are likely to play a significant role again in November.

Bush offered to delay a trip to Africa to resolve the dispute and warned that failure to extend the expanded power under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) could hamper efforts to track terrorists.

"Our intelligence professionals are working day and night to keep us safe, and they're waiting to see whether Congress will give them the tools they need to succeed or tie their hands by failing to act," Bush said.

The surveillance dispute centers on the Protect America Act, a temporary law expanding FISA that was approved over Democratic misgivings in August. It expanded the powers of the government to monitor the communications of foreign targets without warrants, including international phone calls and e-mails passing through or into the United States. It is set to expire at midnight Saturday.

Surveillance efforts will not cease when the law lapses. Administration intelligence officials said agencies would be able to continue eavesdropping on targets that have been approved for a year after the initial authorization. But they said any new targets would have to go through the more burdensome standards in place before August, which would require that they establish probable cause that an international target is connected to a terrorist group.

"The president knows full well that he has all the authority he needs to protect the American people," said Pelosi, who referred to Franklin Roosevelt's admonition about fearing only fear itself. "President Bush tells the American people that he has nothing to offer but fear, and I'm afraid that his fearmongering of this bill is not constructive."

The decision by the House Democratic leadership to let the law lapse represents the most aggressive challenge to Bush on a major national-security issue since the Democrats took control of Congress last year.

The battle over the surveillance bill was tangled up in the rancor over a House vote Wednesday to hold in contempt Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff, and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, for refusing to testify about the firing of U.S. attorneys. Republicans said the House was devoting time to that issue when it could be considering the surveillance program and they staged a walkout in protest.

That contempt vote — resulting in the first citations ever issued against White House officials — infuriated the Bush administration and helped torpedo a short-lived political truce with Democrats, who had celebrated the signing of a bipartisan economic stimulus package Wednesday.

The main sticking point in the surveillance legislation is a provision in the Senate bill that provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that, at the Bush administration's request, cooperated in providing private data after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Many House Democrats oppose that immunity.

Material from The Washington Post is included in this report.