With many Democrats and some
Republicans saying the bill does not go far enough in protecting civil
liberties, the Republican leadership fell short of the 60 votes required to
break a filibuster. Now the future of the law, which greatly expanded the
government's surveillance and investigative powers in the wake of the Sept. 11
attacks, is in doubt.
The debate, a passionate
fight about the balance between national security and personal privacy, became
a touchstone for repercussions after the disclosure on Thursday night that Mr.
Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on
Americans and others inside the United States to search for terrorist activity.
On Friday afternoon, after
the report in The New York Times and the fallout it engendered, Vice President Dick Cheney made a hurried trip to
the Capitol to defend the domestic spying program against charges that it might
be illegal, while Mr. Bush said he "would do everything in my power to Disclosure
of the eavesdropping prompted immediate calls from some lawmakers for an end to
the program and for Congressional and possible criminal investigations into its
operations. One senator, Charles E. Schumer,
Democrat of New York, said the new information had prompted him to support the
filibuster against extending the antiterrorism law.
"I went to bed
undecided," Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor, "but today's
revelation that the government has listened in on thousands of phone
conversations is shocking and has greatly influenced my vote."
Opponents of the extension
say they are concerned that the law would allow the government too much
latitude in obtaining personal information, like library and medical records
and business transactions, and in conducting secret searches.
The vote, 52 to 47, with
four Republicans joining all but two Democrats to back the filibuster, capped a
particularly trying week for Mr. Bush. He has been buffeted by criticism, including
from within his own party, over his policies on terrorism, the war in Iraq and
the detention and treatment of military prisoners.
On Wednesday, Senate
Democrats and Republicans agreed on a measure to require the director of
national intelligence to provide regular, detailed updates about secret
detention sites maintained by the United States overseas. On Thursday, after
weeks of resisting Senator John McCain's effort to pass a
measure banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in
American custody, Mr. Bush reversed course and embraced the plan.
The proposed renewal of the
antiterrorism law had already been teetering under the weight of increased
concerns about civil liberties.
Sixteen major provisions are
set to expire at the end of December, and Congress hopes to adjourn in a few
days. The bill's opponents had pushed for a three-month extension of the law to
allow for more negotiations, but the White House and Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the
majority leader, rebuffed their request.
"The terrorists want to
attack America again and kill the innocent and inflict even greater damage than
they did on Sept. 11 - and the Congress has a responsibility not to take away
this vital tool that law enforcement and intelligence officials have used to
protect the American people," Mr. Bush said in a statement after the vote
against ending debate. "The senators who are filibustering the Patriot Act
must stop their delaying tactics so that we are not without this critical law
for even a single moment."
Some Republicans as well as
Democrats voiced concern about the disclosure that Mr. Bush had authorized the
eavesdropping, without warrants, on the international phone calls and e-mail
messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people within the United States,
despite longstanding legal and policy restrictions on such domestic wiretaps.
A government official said
Mr. Bush took a hands-on role in the oversight of the program, reviewing it
every 45 to 60 days and renewing the original executive order more than three
dozen times. The official said that close oversight reflected a determination
by the White House to monitor the program closely.
Officials spoke about the
program on condition of anonymity because it was classified. A series of legal
opinions within the Bush administration have supported the president's
authority to conduct such warrantless searches, citing the authority that
Congress gave him after the Sept. 11 attacks to deter Al Qaeda, officials
involved in the operation said. But concerns about the program's use and the
complexities of the legal rationale behind it prompted the administration to
suspend it for a time in 2004 and impose new restrictions to better safeguard
against abuse of civil liberties, the officials said.
Officials who were briefed
on Mr. Cheney's closed-door meetings with House and Senate leaders on Friday
declined to discuss them in detail because they took place in a classified
setting. But they said Mr. Cheney, whose office helped lead the creation of the
eavesdropping program, offered a vigorous defense of its legality and
usefulness.
The lawmakers Mr. Cheney met
with, Democrats and Republicans, had been briefed on the program previously,
and the vice president focused less on explaining the program than on
discussing the impact of the disclosure, one official said.
Mr. Bush was asked about the
program on the PBS program "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," but he
would not confirm its existence.
"We do not discuss
ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country," he said.
"And the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like
to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them."
But Mr. Bush added: "I
will make this point. That whatever I do to protect the American people, and I
have an obligation to do so, that we will uphold the law, and decisions made
are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of
the American people."
"I told the American
people I would do everything in my power to protect the country, within the
law, and that's exactly how I conduct my presidency," he said.
The president suggested that
the disclosure was not as big an issue as the news media and policy makers were
making it out to be.
"It's not the main
story of the day," Mr. Bush said. "The main story of the day is the
Iraqi election."
But leading members of
Congress from both parties made clear that they considered the eavesdropping
program to be a major issue, raising what they described as troubling questions
about the president's use of his authority to combat terrorism.
Senator Arlen Specter, the
Pennsylvania Republican who leads the Judiciary Committee, promised full
oversight hearings into the program, saying, "There is no doubt that this
is inappropriate."
Mr. Specter said the
hearings would "take precedence over every other item that that committee
has scheduled," except for the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the
Supreme Court, and he added that he intended to call N.S.A. officials and the
attorney general as witnesses.
Mr. Specter and other lawmakers
from both parties questioned the legality of Mr. Bush's executive order.
"The law prohibits this
type of electronic surveillance," Mr. Specter said, "and there are a
lot of basic questions that need to be answered about how this program was
authorized and used."
"I want to know
precisely what they did," he said. "How N.S.A. utilized their
technical equipment; whose conversations they overheard; how many conversations
they overheard; what they did with the material; what purported justification
there was - and I use the word 'purported' to emphasize - and we will go from
there."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat
of Massachusetts, denounced the program as "Big Brother run amok,"
while Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said the disclosure
"ought to send a chill down the spine of every American and every
senator."
"You want to talk about
abuses?" Mr. Feingold asked. "I can't imagine a more shocking example
of an abuse of power, to eavesdrop on American citizens without first getting a
court order based on some evidence that they are possibly criminals, terrorists
or spies."
Some lawmakers called for an
immediate end to the program. Among them was Senator Chuck Hagel, a moderate
Republican from Nebraska who sits on the Intelligence Committee and voted to
block extension of the antiterrorism law.
"This is a very serious
issue, a very serious story," Mr. Hagel told reporters. "If, in fact,
this is true, then it needs to stop. It's very clear in the law that the
National Security Agency is prohibited from domestic spying, from spying on
citizens of the United States unless there are extenuating circumstances. But
we need some answers to this."
Mr. Specter said the report
had been "very, very problemsome, if not devastating," to his effort
to reauthorize the antiterrorism law.
But opponents of the
extension said that, with support building for the filibuster all week, the
outcome would probably have been the same.
"This was the will of
the Senate," said Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, who
led the opposition among Republicans.
The two Democrats who broke
ranks to oppose the filibuster were Senators Tim Johnson of South Dakota and
Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
Ever since the adoption of
the antiterrorism law, critics have said it failed to strike the proper balance
between protecting national security and personal privacy. The measure that was
blocked in the Senate on Friday was the product of intense negotiations with
the House, which passed it earlier this week. It would make 14 of the 16 major
provisions permanent and would extend three others for four years. It would
also add new safeguards, including some provisions for judicial oversight.
But Mr. Sununu and other
opponents, including Senators Larry E. Craig of Idaho and Lisa Murkowski of
Alaska, both Republicans, said those safeguards did not go far enough.
It is now up to the White
House and Mr. Frist to decide whether to negotiate or let the 16 provisions
lapse.
Publicly, Mr. Frist insisted
he would do neither. He took the tactical step on Friday of switching his vote
at the last minute to side with the backers of the filibuster, a maneuver that
allows him to bring the measure up for consideration again. After the vote, he
said he would do so.
In holding fast, Mr. Frist
and other Republicans may be calculating that Democrats would suffer at the
polls for rejecting extension of the antiterrorism law, just as, the
Republicans argued, they suffered in 2002 for defeating legislation to create
the Department of Homeland Security.
But the chief Democratic
opponent of the antiterrorism law, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont,
said the votes would not change.