 By EDWARD EPSTEIN San Francisco Chronicle January 31, 2006
The five-week renewal of the 16 expiring sections, which passed just as Congress left Washington in late December, ends Friday, but it seems the most likely action this week is passage of another short-term extension.
House-Senate negotiations over resolving the Senate's insistence on greater civil liberty protections in a few sections apparently have not produced an agreement. The debate over the renewal of the Patriot Act provisions has become embroiled in the disclosure of President Bush's approval for the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant on phone calls and e-mails in this country. Although the investigative tools in the Patriot Act provisions are not directly related to that secret spying, the disclosure led some senators from both parties to insist on increased civil liberties protections in the handful of provisions that are in dispute. "It sounds like we might need another short-term extension," said Jeff Lungren, spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. Sensenbrenner, the lead House negotiator in trying to work out an accord on differing House and Senate versions of the renewal, balked at the Senate's plan for a six-month Patriot Act extension near the end of December and insisted on the five-week renewal. He believes "a long-term extension just allows them (the Senate) to kick the issue down the road," Lungren said. That view may prevail again, probably Wednesday when the House plans to vote on the issue. "It's kind of like where we were five weeks ago," said Lungren. Further complicating the Patriot Act renewal Judge Samuel Alito's opinions of presidential power. Critics say Alito takes an expansive view. They fear that once on the Supreme Court Alito will uphold Bush's use of the warrantless eavesdropping and other expanded authority in the open-ended war on terrorism. The furor over domestic spying is expected to intensify next week, when the Senate Judiciary Committee opens hearings into the Bush administration's assertion that it has legal authority for the program. The lead witness will be Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who as White House counsel in 2001 advised Bush he could order the eavesdropping despite the requirements of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for warrants for such snooping. Most of the Patriot Act enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is permanent. But 16 key provisions were so controversial even then that Congress required they expire in four years unless renewed. The wrangling in the latest version has narrowed to disagreement over how to curb the FBI's access to Americans' library, bookstore, business or Internet records for terrorist investigations; what rights the targets of so-called national security letters have in appealing such orders for information; and how long after agents conduct secret searches must they notify their target. Bush has left no doubt he believes the act must be renewed. "The Patriot Act may be set to expire, but the threats to the United States haven't expired," he said at Kansas State University last week. His critics say the president has overstated his case by making it seem that the entire act is set to expire and that they want to kill the entire legislation. "Congress extended this Patriot Act to February the 3rd. That's not good enough for the American people, it seems like to me," Bush said. "When they get back there, they need to make sure they extend all aspects of the Patriot Act to protect the American people." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, responded: "Ninety percent of the Patriot Act is law. So when the president says, 'I need the Patriot Act to do my job,' - 90 percent of it is law. The discussion now is about the most controversial 10 percent of it. And these concerns are shared by Democrats and Republicans."
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