From the Bush Administration perspective, apparently FISA was not working. But what does that mean exactly? And what did the Bush Adminisitration need to do to make it work?
testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee provides some of the most revealing insights into the Bush Administration ethics of mendacity, secretiveness and incompetence. In particular, the questioning by Senator Michael DeWine (R-OH) of Ashcroft demonstrates that the "failings" of FISA are solely the responsibility of the Justice Department -- Justice, and thus the Bush Administration simply did not do its job on FISA, and the War on Terror, contrary to
[SEN.] DEWINE: The FISA statute is one of the most important weapons we have in the fight against terrorism. In fact, really, I'm not sure there's anything that the Justice Department does that's more important than administering the FISA statute. Unfortunately, it appears that we're still having problems with the FISA process.
On the plus side, it seems as though the Justice Department has been more aggressive in filing FISA applications, with the result that last year we saw record number of applications: over 1,700 according to your testimony. Unfortunately, however, many applications are still sitting and waiting to be processed. The staff of the independent 9/11 commission tells us, and I quote, "The application process, nonetheless, continue to be long and slow."
And that process is still subject to, and again I quote, "bottlenecks."bSimilarly, Mr. Attorney General, on May 20th, at the last FBI oversight hearing held by this committee, I asked FBI Director Mueller how well he thought the FISA statute was being utilized. Frankly, he seemed a little uncomfortable with the question. And he didn't want to go into much detail because some of the information, understandably, might be classified. But what he said was this -- and I must tell you, Mr. Attorney General, I was very concerned by what he did say, and let me quote -- and this is a direct quote -- "We still have concerns. There is still frustration out there in the field in certain areas where, because we've had to prioritize, we cannot get to certain requests for FISA as fast as perhaps we might have in the past," end of quote.
So you've got the independent 9/11 commission saying that. You've got the FBI director with his very candid comments to our committee. Other information that I receive indicates there's a bottleneck. You know, I understand that you're doing a better job. You've put more resources into this. But governance is priorities. And I don't know anything that is more important that you all are doing than getting these FISA applications through.
And if I was somebody out in the field and I had worked up a FISA application and I thought it was the most important thing in the world and I'd worked it up and I had everything lined up. And it was sitting there, sitting in Washington, and I couldn't get it through, I would be very discouraged. I think it has a -- I think it has to have a demoralizing affect on the people out in the field.
And there's still a problem there. I mean, there is still a problem. And I guess my question is what can you do to put more resources on this? I just think, Mr. Attorney General, you've got a ways to go on this. And I just don't think there's anything more important that you're doing. And I just think you need to put more resources on it and prioritize this.
ASHCROFT: Let me thank you for raising this issue. It's a matter of great concern to me. The first or second thing that happened to me after I got into office was a call from the FISA court saying that we needed to renovate the FISA operation. We did. And that was early in the year 2001.
And then when September 11th hit, the demand for FISA coverage skyrocketed. It's increased by -- well, the numbers really aren't very helpful. We can say by the number of petitions up by 85 percent, but some of these are very substantial multiple surveillance petitions so that it doesn't really reflect the true numbers total.
I think there a couple of things that we wanted to do. We want to restructure the operations so that we don't have a duplicate effort, one on the FBI side, and then have it done all over again when it comes to Justice and redone. And we want to be able to work promptly by avoiding those kind of bottlenecks.
In April of this year, I combined -- in response to these issues, and part of them I think you had written about or conferred with me about, as I recall... we created a special group of attorneys to look at this out of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review to cut down on the costs of moving across the street back and forth to the FBI and moving from the field to Washington.
And we are making progress. The problem is remediating. We have fewer pipeline FISAs now than before but we're not home yet. And so we will continue to work in that respect. I have asked, in each of the past three weeks, the chairman of this task force for reports and the reports are encouraging.
I would just say this: that we are prioritizing among FISA applications... so that at least the most promising of those applications are the ones that would be first attended to. But, frankly, it's not easy always to know where you're going to get the most, the best intelligence. And it is not a situation where I'm confident in saying, "Well, oh well, we don't have to worry about that one. That might not be as productive..."
[DEWINE]: And, Mr. Attorney General, my time is up. But I think that's just the point. I think you are prioritizing and you have to, but I think it's dangerous when you have to prioritize. I think you're doing a better job, but all the information I can get indicates that we've still got a ways to go. I think you all can do a better job. And I just think that you need to put more resources on this. And I would just encourage you to put more resources on this.
I don't know that there's anything more important that you're doing in the war on terrorism. And I don't know how to say it any stronger: You've got to put more resources on this; you've got to do a better job.
Translation --- Justice, and thus the Bush Administration, was screwing up the FISA applications. The FISA Court was not the problem. Justice, and thus the Bush Administration, was the problem.