By Ryan Singel
October 18, 2007 - The Guardian
Senator Russell Feingold, (D-Wisconsin), who cast the only
Senate vote against the Patriot Act and now sits on the Select
Intelligence committee, seems to have looked at secret spying
documents given by the White House to that committee and
found that they do not exonerate the government's secret
spying programs or the phone and internet companies that
secretly aided them.
The White House seemingly provided the documents in exchange
for legislation that would free its telecom partners from being
sued by Americans for violating their privacy. The Senate Intelligence
Committee is holding a closed meeting on the bill today.
According to a press release:
When the Committee considers this legislation today, I will
also fight to reject immunity for anyone alleged to have
cooperated with the Administration’s illegal warrantless
wiretapping program. The documents made available by the
White House for the first time this week only further demonstrate
that the program was illegal and that there is no basis for
granting retroactive immunity to those who allegedly cooperated.
The one silver lining of the flawed FISA bill passed in August
was that it had a 6-month expiration date. It would be shameful
to miss this opportunity to fix the law.
A spokeswoman for Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy,
who unsuccessfully tried to subpoena documents about the secret
spying programs, says that the White House has not yet promised
to share the documents with his committee, but has not yet
said no, either.
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