State Your Secrets

[mooseandsquirrel]

As the Senate debates a fix to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act this week, the battles rage fiercest over whether to grant immunity from liability to private telecom companies that assisted the administration with terrorist surveillance (aka domestic eavesdropping). Fans of immunity, which would be retroactive, have staked their position on a claim with which it's hard to disagree. If the telecom companies really acted in good faith based on the Bush administration's legal representations, they say, then it's the administration that should be on trial. Thus, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has stated that he supports immunity because he's seen the legal documents the administration gave the telecoms that vouched for the program's legality. Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., have hinted the same. The president himself cares so deeply about retroactive immunity that he's said he'll veto a FISA bill that gives him everything he wants but that.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2177962/

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