Letter: GOP Whip Roy Blunt assails House Democrats over FISA RAW STORY

Published: Saturday February 16, 2008



|

Print This Email This ALSO SEE: Democratic Rep. Silvestre Reyes' refusal to acquiesce Today, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) has released the following letter in regards to the sunset of the Protect America Act: #### At midnight tonight, a critical national security law will expire. It is set to expire, because House Democratic leaders blatantly refused to take up bipartisan, Senate legislation that would have closed a dangerous terrorist loophole. The consequence is that our intelligence community will lose its ability to affectively and quickly listen to terrorist communications. This is no exaggeration. The Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General of the United States, in a letter to the Senate Majority Leader earlier this year, wrote that if the Congress failed to act our ability to obtain intelligence information would be weakened. This same message was sent by the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who said on the Senate floor Thursday 'that the quality of the intelligence we are going to be receiving is going to be degraded.' The issue at hand is over legal protection for telecommunications companies that helped our government in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks intercept foreign terrorist communications. This lack of protection has already hurt our ability to gather intelligence  and it will only get worse. As companies fear being dragged into the court room, they will stop their activities in support of tracking terrorists. I am angry that the House did not consider this bill. And House Democrats should be angry as well. The Democratic leadership allowed our intelligence gathering to be compromised, because they failed to pass a bill by a deadline that they themselves set. Some allege that there is no urgency. I wholeheartedly disagree. With each passing day, our intelligence capacity grows dimmer and dimmer and the less able we are to track a call or intercept an email into the United States from someone like Osama Bin Laden. Our nation should not be in this situation. The Houses failure to act is a gross dereliction of our constitutional duty to stand for the nations defense. #



