Word: specter
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...much a sign of White House desperation as anything. In the final, face-to-face negotiations between President Bush and Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter on Tuesday for oversight of Bush's controversial domestic eavesdropping program, the President made one final attempt to retain near-absolute wartime powers. The White House had argued throughout the months of staff-level negotiations that Bush needed explicit acknowledgement of his wartime powers in the Specter bill at the heart of the deal. Once again, Specter rejected it, as his staff had from the start - and Bush capitulated...
...Specter announced the deal Thursday, and it has not been particularly well received on Capitol Hill or among critics of the Administration. That's because it limits presidential power in only narrow, almost symbolic ways - which is surely why Bush signed on for it. But the timing of the deal is telling; in the ongoing series of negotiations between the legislative and executive branches over the balance of power in the "war on terrorism," it is just the latest sign of how the ground is slipping out from under the White House...
...Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, took it upon himself to reassert some limited congressional and judicial oversight of the President's wartime powers. In talks with the Justice Department, the White House and the NSA , his staff pushed to have the program's constitutionality reviewed by the same secretive court, established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Congress passed in the 1970s, that is charged with approving warrants for domestic wiretapping - the same court, in fact, that the Administration had bypassed when it conducted eavesdropping without obtaining warrants...
...bill would still give Bush much of the authority to pursue his eavesdropping program - something most Senators still support. Under the deal, Bush conditionally agreed that he would apply for authority to the secret FISA court which. However the specific agreement to have the program reviewed by the court, Specter and Gonzales said, is not actually written into the bill, and is valid only if the bill makes it through the House and Senate unaltered. The deal also requires in writing twice-yearly reports to the congressional intelligence committees on "any electronic surveillance programs in effect." And it would also...
...wake of that ruling, the White House is scrambling to find a way to retain some of the powers it once claimed absolutely - which explains the timing of the agreement with Specter. Signing on to his deal was an attempt by the White House to limit just how much oversight it would have to agree to. It was, in other words, the best deal the White House was likely...