March 7, 2006
DeLay Wins Texas Primary
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSFiled at 11:12 p.m. ET
SUGAR LAND, Texas (AP)
Rep. Tom DeLay won the GOP nomination to the House on Tuesday, beating three challengers in his first election since he was indicted and forced to step aside as majority leader.With 14 percent of precincts reporting, DeLay had 10,005 votes, or 64 percent. His closest challenger, environmental attorney Tom Campbell, had 4,049 votes, or 26 percent.
''I have always placed my faith in the voters, and today's vote shows they have placed their full faith in me,'' DeLay said in a statement. ''Not only did they reject the politics of personal destruction, but they strongly rejected the candidates who used those Democrat tactics as their platform.''
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March 8, 2006
G.O.P. Senators and Bush Reach Wiretap Accord
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICKand SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, March 7 — Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.
The agreement, hashed out in weeks of negotiations between Vice President Dick Cheney and Republicans critical of the program, dashes Democratic hopes of starting a full committee investigation because the proposal won the support of Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. The two, both Republicans, had threatened to support a fuller inquiry if the White House did not disclose more about the program to Congress.
"We are reasserting Congressional responsibility and oversight," Ms. Snowe said.
The proposed legislation would create a seven-member "terrorist surveillance subcommittee" and require the administration to give it full access to the details of the program's operations.
Ms. Snowe said the panel would start work on Wednesday, and called it "the beginning, not the end of the process.""We have to get the facts in order to weigh in," she said. "We will do more if we learn there is more to do."
The agreement would reinforce the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created in 1978 to issue special warrants for spying but was sidestepped by the administration. The measure would require the administration to seek a warrant from the court whenever possible.
If the administration elects not to do so after 45 days, the attorney general must certify that the surveillance is necessary to protect the country and explain to the subcommittee why the administration has not sought a warrant. The attorney general would be required to give an update to the subcommittee every 45 days.
Democrats called the deal an abdication of the special bipartisan committee's role as a watchdog, saying the Republicans had in effect blessed the program before learning how it worked or what it entailed.
"The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House," said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is vice chairman of the panel.
The House Intelligence Committee said last week that it would seek limited briefings for some panel members so that they could weigh changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but the Republican leaders of the House committee stopped far short of proposing the kind of continuing oversight and rules changes that the Senate committee has settled on.
A spokeswoman for the White House, Dana Perino, called the Republican senators' proposal "a generally sound approach."
"We're eager to work with Congress on legislation that would further codify the president's authority," Ms. Perino said. "We remain committed to our principle, that we will not do anything that undermines the program's capabilities or the president's authority."
Republicans on the committee, however, emphasized the administration's resistance to the accord. Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee and helped broker the deal, called it "the agreement we insisted upon."
Ms. Snowe said the proposal had met "considerable reluctance" from the White House in negotiations.
The committee had scheduled a vote on a full investigation for Tuesday afternoon if there was no accord with the White House to disclose more about the program. As of midday, no resolution had been reached.
Mr. Hagel said the group worked out the last-minute deal in long telephone calls with Mr. Cheney; the White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers; and Stephen J. Hadley, the assistant to the president for national security.
The proposed bill would allow the president to authorize wiretapping without seeking a warrant for up to 45 days if the communication under surveillance involved someone suspected of being a member of or a collaborator with a specified list of terrorist groups and if at least one party to the conversation was outside the United States.
The administration has provided some information in confidential briefings to a "Gang of Eight" lawmakers made up of the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate, as well as their respective Intelligence Committees. Republican sponsors of the proposal said the new subcommittees would greatly improve lawmakers' ability to obtain digest information because the staffs for the first time would have access to it.
Senator Mike DeWine, the Ohio Republican who helped draft the proposal, said it would bring the program "into the normal oversight of the Senate intelligence committee."
But Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, compared the proposed bill to a doctor's diagnosis of an unexamined patient. "Congress doesn't have that great a history in reforming programs it knows a lot about," Mr. Wyden said. "Here Congress is trying to legislate in the dark."
Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, the majority leader, issued a statement supporting the proposal.
It is not clear whether all the Republican critics will back the deal. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said Congress should seek a court ruling on the legitimacy of the program in addition to new oversight.
In a separate Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Specter said, "We're having quite a time in getting responses to questions as to what has happened with the electronic surveillance program." He said he put the administration "on notice" he might seek to block its financing if Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales did not give more information.
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