Talks with Ruppersberger have been productive on a bill that would address Snowden fallout. Panel 'close' to killing NSA programs

The House Intelligence Committee’s Republican and Democratic leaders said Thursday they’re nearing agreement on legislation that would end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of U.S. citizens’ telephone data.

Negotiations on some key details remain fluid, but Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) said in an interview that he’s “very close” to a deal with Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) on a plan that would allow phone companies to hold telephone records now collected by the NSA and conduct individual searches needed to pinpoint suspicious activity.


“We’ve got to have legislation that will take away the concern and perception that people are being listened to,” Ruppersberger said. He added that he hoped to reach an agreement before the end of this month.

In a separate interview, Rogers avoided specifics, though he did confirm that talks with Ruppersberger and White House officials have been productive on a bill that would try to address some of the fallout from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s stolen secret documents.

“I’ve been working with Dutch, with other colleagues in the House, to try to put something together that protects, that continues to protect, civil liberties — that allows us to keep the fundamental portions of our counter-terrorism programs. We’ve been looking for those confidence builders for some time,” Rogers said. “We think we’re getting close to a deal.”

White House aides are “aware of what we’re doing,” Rogers added. “We’re trying to make this a collaborative effort. These are important programs. And if we can make them function, that’s the most important thing we can do. I think we can do that.”

The two House Intelligence Committee leaders are trying to reach their agreement ahead of a March 28 deadline that President Barack Obama has set for Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to produce recommendations on the fate of the NSA program.

Obama floated several ideas in a speech in January, including having the individual phone companies hold onto the call data or forming a third party that would pool the information, but left the details to his national security team.

“We want to be a part of that process. One of the things we’ve said to the White House [is] that we want to make sure they don’t come and say, ‘Here it is,’” Ruppersberger said.

Ruppersberger, who represents the suburban Washington, D.C., district that includes NSA headquarters, said the emerging proposal would give federal courts the ability to oversee each incident where the government accesses a phone record in the hands of the private telephone companies. The telephone companies would keep the data for up to 18 months, the same time period they currently are required to follow.

“This is all negotiable,” he said.

Whether a Rogers-Ruppersberger deal can get traction in Congress remains an open question. Leaders of the House Judiciary Committee, as well as its Senate counterpart, aim to end the bulk-collection program altogether. A separate plan approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee would maintain the program while adding new privacy safeguards.

Vice Adm. Mike Rogers, Obama’s pick to be the next director of the NSA, told a Senate panel on Tuesday that he supports Obama’s call to move the information from the NSA to an outside entity or third party.

“I believe we could make either scenario work, whether the service providers did it or a third party did it,” Vice Adm. Rogers, currently the Navy’s top cyber official, testified during his confirmation hearing before the Armed Services Committee. “There’s definitely some challenges we need to work through, but I’m confident in our ability to do so.”

Atop the incoming NSA chief’s list of concerns, though, was, “How do we address the idea of speed, the idea to query the data in a way to protect the rights of individuals but also enables us a way to get answers in a quick and reasonable time period.”