Judiciary Cmte Must Mark Up Surveillance Bill — or Shut Up

Inside Roll Call‘s (sub. req.) overview of legislative maneuvers on the two Democratic surveillance bills is this bit of analysis about how the Senate Judiciary Committee will lose influence over the Senate bill if it doesn’t mark up what the intelligence committee has reported out:

If Judiciary doesn’t act on anything, the panel could forfeit its right to weigh in and the Rockefeller measure would proceed as-is to the Senate floor. (There’s no guarantee Reid would bring it up if that happened, however.)

“If [Judiciary members] want to stay in the game, they’re going to have to mark something up,” pointed out one civil liberties activist.

The panel’s top senators, Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), suggested yesterday that the committee might not act on the intelligence committee’s bill if the White House doesn’t allow it to see documents outlining the legal basis for the Bush administration’s surveillance program. But that implicit threat might backfire. To be out of the legislative process over surveillance programs that Judiciary has struggled for nearly two years to oversee would be a huge blow to the committee’s prestige. Furthermore, it might be a missed opportunity to modify what civil libertarians consider the bill’s excesses, including retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications companies and a diminished role for the FISA Court over foreign-to-domestic surveillance.

If Judiciary does take it up, two Intelligence panel Democrats who also sit on Judiciary — Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) — may seek changes even though they already voted for the Rockefeller measure.

A Whitehouse spokeswoman said the freshman Senator is concerned the bill does not ensure that law enforcement agencies properly handle and dispose of information on innocent Americans that may be collected in the surveillance dragnet authorized by the bill. Whitehouse wants the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to assess the government’s compliance with procedures designed to minimize the collection and dissemination of innocent Americans’ information.

All this suggests that the White House is in a more commanding position not to release documents that Judiciary has subpoenaed than it may appear