Wyden Points to "Serious Violations" in FISA Spying Program

August 1, 2013 • 10:42AM

In back-to-back speeches on the Senate floor last night, Sens. Ron Wyden (D. Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) called for an end to the Administration's bulk records collection programs, and pointed to a number of misleading statements that have been made by top intelligence officials. Wyden referred to a letter sent to a number of Senators by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, last Friday, in which Clapper admitted that there have been violations of the PATRIOT Act, and specifically, that the Government had violated court orders on the bulk collection of those phone records.

"I am not allowed to discuss the classified nature of that," Wyden said, "but I want to make sure those who are following this debate know that from my vantage point, reading those documents that are classified, these violations are more serious than have been stated by the intelligence community, and in my view that is very troubling." He continued, "So I do hope Senators will go to the Intelligence Committee and ask to see those classified documents, because I think [that] when they read them— I think they will come to the conclusion to which I have come ... that the violations are more serious than they thought— than the intelligence community portrayed."

Udall went after the Administration's claims that 54 terrorist plots have been disrupted by the NSA's bulk data collection programs. Udall said that officials are conflating two programs: Sec. 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, pertaining to foreigners' Internet communications, and Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act, pertaining to bulk phone data. Udall said, as someone who has been fully briefed on these programs, that it appears that the bulk phone records program "played little or no role in disrupting terrorist plots." Udall said that there was no reason that investigative agencies could not have obtained the relevant information directly from the phone companies using a regular court order.

This issue also came up in this morning's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, where Administration witnesses were forced to admit that only in one case, could it be said that "but for" the phone metadata program under Sec. 215, the plot would not have been discovered.

Only one day prior, it was reported that U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley, (R-IA) and Carl Levin (D-MI) submitted a resolution for a new commemorative holiday, the National Whistleblower Appreciation Day, on July 30. "Anything we can do to uphold whistleblowers and their protection is the right thing to keep government responsible," Grassley stated. "If you know laws are being violated and money's being misspent, you have a patriotic duty to report it."

July 30 is the 235th anniversary of the 1778 bill passed by the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War, which stated that "[I]t is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States, as well as all other the inhabitants thereof, to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states, which may come to their knowledge." That bill was passed to protect the crew of the U.S. warship Warren, after they had exposed Continental Navy commander Commodore Esek Hopkins for mistreatment of captured British soldiers in 1777, and were sued by the Commodore for libel.