Surveillance bill is sent to Bush

It took almost a year of debate for Congress to agree on a final version.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A German chancellor once compared making laws to making sausages. The description could have fit the eavesdropping legislation Congress sent to the White House on Wednesday.

The bill had taken at least eight different forms on the House and Senate floors in a long and messy process since the Bush administration claimed last summer that terrorists’ calls and e-mails were going unintercepted because of an outdated eavesdropping law.

In the end, the Senate bowed to President Bush’s demands and approved the final version on a relatively one-sided vote, 69-28.

But that came only after a lengthy and bitter debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks.

It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president’s warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bush had threatened to veto any version that didn’t shield from civil lawsuits the telecommunications companies that wiretapped Americans’ phone and computer lines at the White House’s request without court permission.

Forty-six lawsuits now stand to be dismissed because of the law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. They are all pending before a single U.S. District Court in California.

“Months ago my administration set out key criteria that this intelligence legislation would have to have before I would sign it into law,” Bush said Wednesday. “The bill Congress passed today meets these criteria”

But the fight over the bill has not ended. Civil rights groups are already preparing lawsuits challenging its constitutionality, and four other suits, filed against government officials, will not be dismissed.

Opponents have assailed the eavesdropping program, asserting that it imperiled citizens’ rights of privacy from government intrusion.

But Bush said the legislation protects those rights as well as Americans’ security.

“This bill will help our intelligence professionals learn who the terrorists are talking to, what they’re saying and what they’re planning,” he said in a brief White House appearance after the Senate vote.

The bill is very much a political compromise, brought about by a deadline: Wiretapping orders authorized last year will begin to expire in August. Without a new bill, the government would go back to old FISA rules, requiring multiple new orders and potential delays to continue those intercepts. That is something most of Congress did not want to see happen, particularly in an election year. The threat of a veto gave the White House a strong bargaining position.