FISA makeover fissures

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One conclusion of investigation into the September 2001 terrorist attacks was that U.S. intelligence agencies had failed to connect the dots about the unfolding plot against us.

Nearly six years later, our lawmakers are still fighting over whether a key intelligence tool needed to connect those dots should be updated to track terrorist communications networking and help prevent the next attack against the United States.

It is a shameful story of partisan bickering, shortsighted antiwar ideologues and Democratic lawmakers who want to weaken the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 under the specious claim it violates American civil liberties.

All this infighting ignores one unarguable reality: We have been kept safe since that dreadful day on September 11, 2001, because of the steps taken to uncover what the terrorists are planning before they can carry out their deadly deeds.

One critical tool that has helped us to do this is FISA. It allows intelligence agencies, acting under a FISA court order, to intercept terrorist calls abroad as well as their calls to terrorist cells in the United States.

Some intercepts were needed immediately, and President Bush, soon after September 11, authorized warrantless intercepts as needed to protect national security.

The New York Times exposed the warrantless activities in 2005, and the Democrats in Congress and their fellow travelers in the American Civil Liberties Union went ballistic — charging that Mr. Bush was illegally spying on Americans.

Unfortunately, Mr. Bush, in a gesture of compromise, said he would seek warrants from the FISA court, but denied he had done anything illegal. In the past, federal courts have upheld such authority under the president's inherent constitutional powers to protect the nation.

But as the Wall Street Journal editorialized recently, "This has turned out to be an enormous mistake that has unilaterally disarmed one of our best intelligence weapons in the war on terror."

The reason: In the era of fiber optics and high-speed telecom systems, hundreds of millions of foreign messages and calls are run through U.S. telecommunications networks. A call from a terrorist abroad that is run through our phone network becomes a domestic call, and thus comes under FISA's delayed, time-consuming, court-order restrictions.