Victory for our security

OPINION:

If left unchecked, al Qaeda will topple another building in the United States, hijack another airliner filled with innocent victims or detonate a nuclear or chemical bomb on a crowded street.

An new Internet message from the terror group shows the White House engulfed in flames and the words “Soon… God willing” — a chilling reminder that September 11, 2001, may have occurred nearly six years ago, but the terrorists’ thirst for blood remains unquenched.

That is why it was a victory for the security of American people and a major blow for our enemies when Congress passed legislation earlier this month to update the law that governs the surveillance of terrorists overseas.

For the Democratic Congress, it was one more example of its failure to protect our nation. If not for the 99 percent of Republicans who voted for the bill (or the fact that 82 percent of Democrats voted against), the measure would have failed — and intelligence officials would have been denied the tools they need to urgently monitor communications between suspected terrorists in foreign countries.

Politics should end at our nation’s border, especially when it comes to defeating terrorism. There was no stronger call for bipartisanship than National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell’s warning that intelligence officials are “missing a significant amount of foreign intelligence that we should be collecting to protect our country” due to shortcomings in the 29-year-old law.

In this case, Congress had more than seven months to act — and more than three months since Director McConnell unveiled a comprehensive reform plan. The House leadership chose to wait for the last day before a month-long recess to fix the law — and then brought a bill to the floor that it opposed and urged its members to vote against.

The need for action can be traced, in part, to a decision in January to place the Terrorist Surveillance Program under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to quell Democratic criticism that the surveillance of foreign targets was being conducted with only the approval of the attorney general — and not a warrant. This move created a backlog of requests for surveillance and was blocking intelligence officials from intercepting communications and detecting plots in a timely manner.

Imagine waiting on line to get approval to eavesdrop on a cell in Germany while terrorists discuss the details of a plan to blow up a building, hijack an aircraft or activate homicide bombers.

The ability to collect information with speed and agility has been the hallmark of the program’s success — it helped block an attack on the Brooklyn Bridge and would have “detected some of the 9/11 al Qaeda operatives in the United States,” according to CIA Director Michael Hayden.

I treasure our civil liberties, but I also value the lives of the American people — and I understand that the terrorists’ war against us sometimes requires gathering intelligence quickly to stop a new attack from occurring.

Suspected terrorists living overseas have never been afforded the same civil liberty protections as Americans living here. The new law returns speed and agility to the program by authorizing intelligence officials to monitor the communications of suspected terrorists overseas without first obtaining a court order. But it also empowers the FISA Court to review the procedures that are used to collect this information.

Think of it this way: Right now, a terrorist in Pakistan is talking to a terrorist in Afghanistan about a plot to kill innocent Americans. Because of this law, an American intelligence official will be able quickly target their conversation, potentially stopping an attack before it occurs.

There’s no good that can come from restricting intelligence officials from monitoring the communications of terrorists overseas — and even less from giving law enforcement the tools to win the war on terrorism while threatening to take them away at any moment.

How can we expect intelligence officials to connect the dots when they may not even be able to collect them next week? Such uncertainty in intelligence gathering can only help our enemies.

With the law set to expire in just six months and the Intelligence and Judiciary committees already working to weaken it as early as next month, Congress would be wise to take the time to evaluate its effectiveness in protecting our nation and respecting the civil liberties of the American people. It’s short-sighted to talk about changing a law that’s just been signed by the president — or even battle tested in the war on terrorism.

There are many who still believe that protecting the rights of terrorists supersedes protecting the lives of Americans. Whether terrorist surveillance remains a key tool in the war on terrorism depends entirely on Congress’ commitment to act responsibly in defense of America.

Vito Fossella is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York.