Three seperate committe hearings took place in congress yesterday.The central component was our governements ability to use technology to listen in on the conversations and communications of terrorists who are looking to kill Americans-of any ethnic or political stripe.

Heaven knows its easy to get mixed up with all the different terms-NSA-TSP-illegal wiretaps-warrantless wiretaps. But maybe thats what Dems want. Keep people confused and lets just keep banging the President over the head asserting he’s breaking the law.

They’ve been successful so far. But yesterday, while two of tghe hearings were all about gotchya’s, one house committe featured Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell’s testimony. This from the WSJ this morning:

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell more or less admitted the problem last week, albeit obliquely, when he told the Senate that “we’re actually missing a significant portion of what we should be getting.” That’s understating things. Our sources say the surveillance program is now at most one-third as effective as it once was.

While the WSJ puts a little blame on the administration for giving into political pressure and giving into the political climate, they say this:

The Administration wants Congress to modernize FISA in two crucial ways: First, by allowing NSA to track on a real-time basis these foreign calls that may be routed through the U.S., and in some cases allowing warrants to be sought after the fact. Our spooks would still be accountable, but they’d also be able to act quickly to defend the country. Second, the White House is requesting liability protection for telecom companies that cooperate with the wiretap program. Neither of these changes should be at all controversial–and we’re confident they’d have overwhelming public support if the issues were understood.

Yet for six months Senate Democrats have resisted these legal changes to make Americans safer. Incredibly, they are fronting for their trial lawyer campaign donors in blocking liability protection. Their counteroffer is to have the federal government supplant the companies as the defendants in any wiretapping lawsuits, as if any such lawsuits were justified. Why are Democrats letting trial lawyers interfere with a vital intelligence operation?

Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy is holding any wiretap legislation hostage to his demand for Administration documents related to the program. This is part of the Democrats’ political exercise to claim that Mr. Bush has somehow broken the law by allowing the wiretaps. Backed by grandstanding Republican Arlen Specter, in short, Mr. Leahy is more interested in fighting over how the program began than in allowing it to continue today.

Democrats in both houses have been using these issues that members of the Bush Administration are tasked with to catch them in a perjury trap. The AP story that a lot of folks bit on yesterday that declared that FBI Director Mueller as evidence. Senated Dems even went so far as pushing for a special prosecutor to go after Alberto Gonzales for perjury. But with the actual evidence before them in the House, Dems knew they couldn’t make the political hay that the Senate was.

At least a few Democrats realize they may be setting themselves up for trouble if there’s another terrorist attack. House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes wrote to Mr. Bush last week saying he was “very concerned” about the program and urging the Administration to “devote all the resources necessary to ensure that we are conducting maximum surveillance of the terrorist target abroad.”

Mr. Reyes went on to note that “FISA does not require a warrant for communications between two individuals outside the United States. If clarifications to the law are necessary, we are prepared to deal with this.” That’ll serve Mr. Reyes well as political cover if the next 9/11 Commission asks who ruined the terrorist surveillance program. But if he’s serious about national security, he should send his next letter to Senate Democrats.

Democrats have had the upper hand with all this, but it may well be that the call for a special prosecutor for Gonzales might be the pinnacle. To his credit, Arlen Specter went to the media after the Dems announced their call for a SP and slamed them. The PR efforts by the WH have been stepped up of late and Republican members of both houses have shown that for once, they’ll hit back.

UPDATE: National Review has an editorial today titled, ‘Perjury Trap” thats also a must read.

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