Heather Wilson

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. If the gentleman would yield, there are some fallacies about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that I think we need to put to rest. One is there is an emergency provision, you can just listen to this stuff and go to the court 72 hours from now. You have an emergency provision. It is true there is an emergency provision, but you have to develop the whole case for probable cause and present it to the Attorney General who has to stand in the shoes of the judge. So you have to get all of the work done; you just don't have the final signoff for a judge. And the time problem occurs before you get to that point. It is to develop the whole case for probable cause. I have seen one of these packets. It is sometimes close to 2 inches thick of paper that explains how you meet all of the requirements of the act. When it really matters, when we had three soldiers who were kidnapped in Iraq, it took over 24 hours to get an emergency warrant. I don't know whether that would have saved our soldiers or not. We thought we had a tip on who it was that had kidnapped them. I don't know if it would have been fast enough even if we would have been able to turn it on immediately. But I know if they were my kids, a 24-hour delay is not good enough, and we should expect more from our Government.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I thank my colleague. In fact, one of the reasons that attorney generals and the Fraternal Order of Police are so strongly in support of this legislation is that they worry that what's happening to our telecommunication companies because of their cooperation with the government on terrorism will also extend and poison the relationship between law enforcement and our telephone companies. There are at least 15 States where we have over 25 lawsuits, some of them against telephone companies that weren't even involved, and those who are involved can't defend themselves in civil court without revealing to the terrorists how we're collecting intelligence on them and compromising our national security. I'm convinced, having looked at this, that they actually have immunity. They just can't prove it. And it is up to this Congress to clarify that companies that cooperated with the U.S. Government in helping us prevent terrorism through electronic surveillance are immune from civil liability lawsuits. I think the law is clear. It's up to the Congress to step up and reaffirm it quite clearly. My colleague from Georgia says, and he's right, that this is kind of a difficult-to-understand technical subject in some respects. But there are some things that aren't difficult to understand. I mean, we all remember where we were the morning of 9/11. We remember who we were with, what we had for breakfast, what we were wearing, who we called first to check to see if they were okay. Very few Americans remember where they were in August of 2006 when the British government arrested 16 people who were within 48 hours of walking onto airliners at Heathrow and blowing them up simultaneously over the Atlantic. One of the terrorists that was involved intended to bring his wife and his 6-month-old baby with him so that they'd all die together. Comprehend that evil for a moment. You're willing to kill your own 6-month-old child in order to blow up an airliner. If that had happened, more people would have died that day than died on the morning of 9/11. But you don't remember it because it didn't happen. And it didn't happen because of cooperation between the British, American and Pakistani intelligence services. Forty-eight hours. They were within 48 hours. How much time should we wait while lawyers gather in Washington to develop cases for probable cause to get a warrant on a foreigner in a foreign country? I yield back to my colleague from Texas.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I think there are two points that haven't been made tonight that I do think are worth making concerning the Protect America Act, which we hope to make permanent in the bill that's come over here from the Senate to fix the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But one of the points that hasn't been made is that the Senate bill that has passed, that's pending on this floor, actually has stronger civil liberties protections for Americans than in the original 1978 law. In fact, Admiral McConnell and Attorney General Mukasey said in a letter on the 22nd of February, ``We note that the privacy protections for Americans in the Senate bill exceed the protections contained in both the Protect America Act and the House bill.'' So, in fact, one of the things that has changed under this new piece of Senate legislation is that if you are an American, wherever you are in the world, if you're known to be an American, you have the protections of the American Constitution. That's not the case under the 1978 FISA law. So, there is actually more civil liberties protections for Americans on the bill that is on the floor of the House than there is under existing statute. And the second thing that I think is worth pointing out is that after 9/11 the President turned to his advisers and everyone in all the intelligence agencies and said, you know, what tools do we have? How can we prevent another terrorist attack? How can we find out what their plans and capabilities and intentions are? The fact is that the terrorist threat is much different than the threat that we faced in the height of the Cold War. I was an Air Force officer in Europe during the Cold War. And the Soviets were a very convenient enemy from an intelligence point of view. They had a very big footprint. We knew where they were. We knew what they had. They had exercises the same time every year out of the same barracks using the same radio frequencies. They would have been very difficult to defeat, but we knew where they were. With the terrorist threat, the problem is completely reversed. If we can find them, we can stop them. The problem is finding them. And, in general, they are using commercial communications. So, instead of being one ugly monster in the forest where you know where they are like the Soviets were, it's more like a ``Where's Waldo'' problem. Can you find the person in the clutter of everything else? That puts the premium on good intelligence. And particularly, in the case of terrorism, electronic surveillance has been one of our most important tools because they are hiding and using commercial communications. That has been one of our strongest tools in preventing terrorist attacks for the last 6 years. And I must say that I believe that the greatest accomplishment of the last 6\1/2\ years has been what has not happened. We have not had another terrorist attack on our soil since the morning of 9/11. And they have tried. It has been good intelligence that has kept this country safe. And for the last 18 days, we have been building another intelligence gap, and this body must act to close it.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. It's not even the majority. The majority of this House, a bipartisan majority of this House, would pass this bill tonight if the liberal Democratic leadership would allow a vote. That's the thing that's so frustrating to me. This is a bill that passed with 68 votes in the Senate. It's pending on the floor of this House. The liberal Democratic leadership who, to a person, opposed the Protect America Act in August is blocking the will of the majority of the House of Representatives that wants to protect this country. They're standing in the way of protecting this country and letting the majority work its will. Why? Because they're concerned about lawsuits against telephone companies and the deep pockets of the telecommunications industry, with trial lawyers saying, hey, aren't you with us. Well, this majority in this House, led by the Republicans in this House, know that national security is the priority of the country, not protecting the trial lawyers.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I want to thank the gentleman from Texas, and I won't take the 2 minutes, but I wanted to thank him for his leadership and persistence. This is going to get fixed because we will not rest until it's fixed, and it is critical to the country that it be fixed. It is now up to the liberal Democrat leadership to listen to the will of this body and pass the Senate bill that will close the intelligence gap. I yield back to my colleague.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, my colleague from California has said that we are trying to work something out on FISA, and the majority has been trying to engage the minority on FISA and it is really too bad we won't participate. I have to tell my colleague from California that I am the ranking member on the Technical and Tactical Intelligence Subcommittee, and I have been invited to no meetings. The ranking member of the entire House Committee on Intelligence has been invited to no meetings. And the reason is that there has been no motion to go to conference on the FISA bill, and there is a difference within the Democratic Caucus. You can't even come talk to us until you resolve your own problems internally, because the reality is that a majority of this body, Democrats and Republicans, want to immediately take up this bill that will close the gap in our intelligence collection that has existed now for 11 days. The rule that we are being asked to consider today actually tables the FISA legislation. And if the rule is defeated, we will immediately bring up the Senate bill that closes this critical intelligence gap. You don't have to believe me. Senator Rockefeller, on the floor of the United States Senate 12 days ago, said, ``People have to understand around here that the quality of intelligence we are going to be receiving is going to be degraded. Is going to be degraded. It's already going to be degraded.'' The Senate bill will reestablish the procedures that we set up in August to listen to foreigners in foreign countries without a warrant, to require warrants for Americans, and put in place stronger civil liberty protections than we had in the base bill that has been in existence since 1978, and will provide liability protection for our partners in this effort and tools to compel assistance similar to those that are under the criminal wiretap procedures. Americans need to understand that the Senate has passed a bill to close this intelligence gap. That bill could be passed on the floor of this House today and the President would sign it. We are operating today under outdated procedures that are delaying our ability to listen rapidly to new tips that come in today. I have been out to our intelligence agencies, and sometimes they start out by saying, Congresswoman, I know you are here to look at a particular program, but I want you to look at what we are tracking today. This is what we are trying to find out today. Here are the five people we are worried about most today. Here are the terrorists that we think are transiting Madrid. They have just come from Pakistan. We don't know where they are going and what they are planning. We are trying to disrupt and stop terrorist attacks every single day in this country, and the minority, the Democrat liberal leadership of this House, refuses to bring to the floor of this House a bill that will close that gap, and you are compromising the security of this country by doing so. I urge a ``no'' vote on this rule.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. If my colleague would think about that for a second, you've got a tip. Most people know that a lot of big cities have gang units. Put this in this context. You got a tip that somebody may be a terrorist overseas, but really all you have is maybe a name and maybe a phone number. That's not enough to get probable cause for a warrant. So you've got to be able to amass why is it that you think this is the person. What relationships do they have? You have to build up this whole case. And unlike something in America where it would be the gang unit in the Albuquerque Police Department or the Washington Police Department, we're talking about people in foreign countries. It's not as though you can send the FBI out to talk to their neighbors to build a case for probable cause to get a warrant to believe that this person is affiliated with a terrorist organization. So in many cases you cannot even reach that standard to get a wiretap in an emergency situation because the probable cause standard was set up to protect Americans who have rights under our Constitution with respect to law enforcement investigations. This is applying a whole body of law to something it was never really intended to be applied to.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I yield to my colleague from Georgia.

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.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk to folks this evening about something that's critical to our country. Ten days ago a very important law was allowed to expire. It's called the Protect America Act, and it made changes to our foreign intelligence surveillance laws. We passed the Protect America Act in August of this last year to close a gap in our intelligence collection caused by changes in technology. Unfortunately, that law had a sunset in it. It expired after 6 months. The Senate passed a bill, a bipartisan bill, overwhelmingly in the Senate, and sent it over to the House. I believe that that bill, if it were brought up on the floor of this House, would pass overwhelmingly here as well. Consideration of that legislation is being blocked by the liberal Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives, and it is putting all of us as Americans at very serious risk. Ten days. Ten days we've been going without the ability to listen to foreigners in a foreign country without a warrant because the Protect America Act has been allowed to expire. I wanted to take this opportunity tonight, with some of my colleagues, to explain why this matters, what the foreign intelligence surveillance laws are, why we should care. Now, I believe that the greatest accomplishment of the last 6 years has been what has not happened. We've not had another terrorist attack on our soil since the morning of 9/11. And they have tried. The first line of defense against terrorism is good intelligence. The intelligence problem has changed since the Cold War when I served in the military. In the Cold War, our biggest enemy was the Soviet Union, and we had no doubt about where they were. In some ways they were a very convenient enemy. They had exercises from the same barracks every year at the same time using the same ray of lines and the same radio frequencies. They were very easy to find. Had they ever attacked us, they would have been very difficult to defeat; but we know where they were. We know what their capabilities were. Today, the problem has completely changed. We have terrorist networks that are hiding in the midst of civil society using commercial telecommunications. If we can find out what they're doing, we can stop them and prevent another terrorist attack. It's almost like it's a Where's Waldo problem. You have to find Waldo who's hiding in the midst of regular, everyday confusion. If we can find him, we can stop him. The hard part is the intelligence problem. It is finding him. It's uncovering what their plans and capabilities and intentions are. And so that's why these laws make so much difference. We need to be able to listen to communications among foreigners in foreign countries, do so very quickly, so that we can act on tips as soon as we get them, and use our great strengths in telecommunications to uncover what our enemies are trying to do and prevent another terrorist attack by then using our law enforcement, our military, our financial networks to shut down and arrest and, in some cases, eliminate these terrorist threats. I want to talk a little bit about what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is for, and then one of my colleagues has joined me here from Oregon, and I will yield to him whenever he is ready to speak. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was put in place in 1978. It was as a result of some abuses by the intelligence community where they had been listening to Americans, and it puts in place protections for Americans so that if you are in America and, for foreign intelligence reasons, the government wants to listen to you, they think you are a spy, you have to go to a court and get a warrant. That's the basics of it. But we do not require warrants and we never have under, or it was never intended under the initial law to require warrants to listen to people overseas. America spies on its enemies. We are trying to figure out what the North Koreans are intending to do, whether they have developed a nuclear weapon, whether they're going to sell that materiel to someone. Likewise, we are trying to figure out what is going on in Venezuela or in Iran or Syria or any hotspot around the world. We seek, through our intelligence agencies, to know the plans and capabilities and intentions of other countries and groups around the world who may harm us. We spy. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act says that you cannot do that on a U.S. person in the United States without going to a special court set up for that purpose and getting a warrant saying you have probable cause to believe that this American is an agent of a foreign power or this person is in America. But the problem is technology changed. In 1978, that was the year that I graduated from high school, the telephone was something that was on the wall in the kitchen. The word ``Internet'' didn't exist. There were no such things as cell phones. I mean, that was Buck Rogers stuff. Technology changed, but the law did not change to keep pace with technology. Under the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, they made a distinction among technology. It said, if it bounces over the air, you don't need a warrant no matter where you are listening. That's because at that time almost all international calls bounced over the air over satellites. At the time in 1978, almost all local calls were over a wire. And so the law was written that said if you touch a wire in the United States, you have got to have a warrant. You are presumed to be impacting a U.S. person. So it was technology-specific for that moment in time. But technology has changed. Today, almost all international traffic goes over a wire or a fiber-optic cable. And in complete reverse from 1978, there are over 2 million cell phones in this country. So a majority now of local calls actually bounce over the air. So we needed to modernize the law so it was no longer technology specific. And what happened over a period of 1 year or 2 was that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court started saying no matter where a person is, if you are trying to listen to somebody in Pakistan, talk to somebody else in Pakistan, you needed to get a warrant if you sought to collect that communication by touching a wire in the United States. This created havoc with our intelligence collection, particularly with fast-moving terrorist targets, and we were losing access to intelligence information from overseas. You can understand why, because you know it's kind of hard to develop a case for probable cause for somebody who is overseas potentially talking to somebody else overseas. I mean, it is not like you can have the FBI go and talk to their neighbors. So a problem built that was compromising America's security. I would be happy to yield to my colleague from Oregon.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, one of the things that bothers me about this is that one of the frustrations is that we can't talk about specific instances, but the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell, has said very clearly, and now publicly, we've lost intelligence. On one of my visits to one of our intelligence agencies where I was there to oversee a particular program and get briefed on it, but when we started out the briefing, the director of that agency said, Congresswoman, I just want you to get a flavor for our highest priority threads we are following today, and he passed a sheet across the table for me to look at what exactly they were trying to, you know, the tips that they had, the leads that they had that day that they were trying to listen in to disrupt attacks on this country. It is a very dynamic situation where you get a tip today, do we have 12 terrorists that are transiting Spain, that are coming from Pakistan, where are they going? They picked up cell phones. We think we have the numbers. Can we listen to them before they move to someplace else and before they move to another number? Can we be as fast as they are, because if we are not, the consequences are devastating. And all of us remember where we were the morning of 9/11. Almost no American remembers where you were the morning that the British Government arrested 16 people who were within 48 hours of walking onto airliners at Heathrow and blowing them up simultaneously over the Atlantic, within 48 hours of killing thousands of Americans who were just flying from Heathrow to JFK or La Guardia. We don't remember it because it didn't happen. And it didn't happen because of the expertise of our intelligence agencies and cooperation with the British and Pakistani Governments. We figured it out before they walked through security at Heathrow, and people didn't die. I yield to my colleague from Oregon.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Reclaiming my time, there are a number of things that bother me most about this, but here in this House, I believe that if this bill were brought up for a vote on the floor of the House, it would pass with the same overwhelming bipartisan majority that it passed the Senate and it would be signed by the President, and we would close the gap that is putting Americans at risk. And we have a small number of people who are liberal Democrats in the elected leadership who are blocking the will of this House. They are preventing this bill from coming to the floor that would pass overwhelmingly if we had the opportunity to vote. And the will of the country is that we fix this problem, and they are standing in the way of the will of the country. We are joined by my colleague from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), and I would be happy to yield to him if he would like to join us.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I yield to my colleague from Pennsylvania.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. The key change in the Protect America Act, and also in the Senate bill that is now being blocked here on the floor of the House, is to allow American intelligence to listen to foreigners in foreign countries without a warrant, even if the point of access to that communication is a wire here in the United States. That's really the fundamental change. It has very strong privacy protections for Americans. Americans, wherever they may be, whether you're off in Germany on vacation with your family, you're an American, you have protections and rights under our Constitution. Foreigners in foreign countries do not have those rights under our Constitution, and we are seeking to gather information on terrorist targets overseas. So it's foreigners in foreign countries. And it just has to do with touching a wire in the United States to gather that information. And it says if the point of access happens to be a wire in the United States, that doesn't matter. What matters is you reasonably believe they are a foreigner in a foreign country. I yield to my colleague from Oregon.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. If the gentleman will yield.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. It was actually a situation like that which caused me to say enough is enough, we have to get this fixed. It was last May, and at the time we couldn't talk about it, but it's been talked about publicly since then. We had soldiers who were kidnapped in Iraq. We had, we thought, a tip on who might have done it. And there was an army of lawyers here in Washington and over a 24-hour delay in listening to communications because they had to touch a wire in the United States. I mean, you think about it, it's your kid, it's your kid that's been kidnapped. All of us are familiar here in America with the AMBER alerts. Speed matters when someone's been kidnapped, and you want to get information out as quickly as possible to try to save somebody. If it was your kid who was in a combat zone who has been kidnapped by insurgents, and we've got a room full of lawyers in Washington trying to get a warrant to listen to the communications of the insurgents that took him? That's not good enough. It's not good enough. And we should expect more of our government than that. And the responsibility for fixing it rests right here in this body. We've got this odd situation with soldiers overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Philippines in dangerous situations where they've got the authority to shoot an insurgent, but they can't listen to him without a warrant. Where is the sense in that?

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. That's right. I yield to my colleague from Pennsylvania.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. And it's even worse than that. You've got your two cell phones there. If the soldiers were able to intercept between that insurgent's cell phone and the tower that it's going to, that's all fine; you don't need a warrant for that. It's only if it happens to route through the United States and you touch the wire where it's actually easier to listen to it that you need a warrant. So it depends on the point of collection. This is stupid. I yield back to my colleague from Pennsylvania.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I yield to my colleague from Oregon.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. And one of the things that baffles me is to be able to hear the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell, say those things, to have very clear testimony both publicly and privately that the problems they predicted are actually taking place, and yet the Democratic leadership in the House is still in a state of denial, just hoping that we don't miss something important. Now, you kind of wonder, why on Earth are they willing to take this risk? Why are they willing to put the rest of us at risk? And I have difficulty understanding that. And I listened to some of my colleagues on the floor of the House here in the debate last week when one of my Democratic colleagues actually said that he thought that listening to foreigners in foreign countries without a warrant was suspicious and disrespectful.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. He said it was suspicious and disrespectful to listen to foreigners in foreign countries without a warrant. And I couldn't believe he said it. I just couldn't believe it. As if this is about America being polite to terrorists.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I yield to my colleague from Pennsylvania.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. One of the things that I think we need to dispel is a couple of myths, and they are myths being promulgated by the Democratic leadership that is blocking the will of the majority in this House from passing this legislation. And one of them is that, oh, well, we can start emergency surveillance, emergency wiretaps in a matter of minutes. It's really just not that big a deal, when, in fact, that's not true. The requirement under the existing law is that the Attorney General can start a wiretap without going to the court in an emergency, but he has to stand in the shoes of the court. He has to certify that all the elements of probable cause to get a warrant are already there. So all of the material that would be presented to the court has to be completely worked up. And we found in the real world when it really mattered, we had three soldiers that were kidnapped in Iraq, it took over 24 hours to gather the information, build the case for probable cause. And some of my colleagues said, well, you know, you should have just gone ahead and done it and we would have just taken care of it after the fact. We had testimony in front of the Intelligence Committee where the chairman actually said that. And I looked at the young man who was there who was a member of the intelligence community, and I said, Is it true that initiating a wiretap without authority is a felony? And he said, Yes, ma'am, it is. I said, Would you be willing to risk a felony, hoping that this body would somehow cut you some slack or the prosecutor wouldn't go after you? And he said, I'm an officer of the court. I'm a lawyer. I can't knowingly commit a felony. I can't do that.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I yield to my colleague from Pennsylvania.