Surveillance bill on hold after GOP maneuver

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives put off a scheduled vote to overhaul federal eavesdropping law after Republicans pushed back against its limits on warrantless surveillance.

House Republicans wanted to send the bill back into committee to add language making wiretaps aimed at Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders exempt from judicial oversight.

"Rather than taking that vote and joining with Republicans to send a clear message of intent with this bill, the majority decided that plan carried too much political risk," House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, said in a statement after Wednesday's decision.

Democrats say their existing bill would give the government everything it needs to fight terrorism while protecting Americans' constitutional rights.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said the Republican move would have "substantially delayed" a bill President Bush has called a top priority.

In a written statement, Hoyer said Republicans "have chosen to engage in politics rather than substantively address the challenges that face the American people."

Hoyer's spokeswoman, Stacey Bernards, called it "a cheap shot." "We aren't going to take the bait," she said.

Democratic aides said the leadership would bring the bill back to the floor next week.

Two Democratic staffers said leaders agreed to put off the vote because they lacked the votes to advance the measure.

Some Democrats were worried that Republicans would use the vote to attack them as being soft on terrorism. One concern was that a vote against the Republican amendment could be portrayed as a vote to protect al Qaeda from wiretapping, The Associated Press reported.

Other Democrats were unhappy with a bill they believe would give too much power to the administration, the staffers said.

Some Republicans said that if Democrats supported the bill, including the amendment, it would be an admission that the surveillance process has become so "lawyered up" that it should not apply to al Qaeda.

"I think we have a checkmate," a senior GOP leadership aide told CNN.

The bill would overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires investigators to get the approval of a special court to intercept calls and e-mail of people in the United States.

After the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to monitor communications between the United States and people overseas suspected of having links to terrorism. The program, disclosed in 2005, bypassed the secret court established by FISA, which was passed to curb Watergate-era wiretapping abuses.

Bush admitted ordering the program in 2005. Critics say it violates FISA, and that the revisions the Bush administration wants would gut the law.

Administration officials argue the law is outdated, since modern technology sometimes routes calls between people overseas -- who would not be subject to FISA's restrictions -- through switches in the United States.

Congress passed a temporary measure giving the administration the changes it sought, but that legislation is set to expire in February. Bush told reporters Wednesday that the measure House Democrats had been set to vote on "would weaken the reforms they approved just two months ago."

"When it comes to improving FISA, Congress needs to move forward, not backward, so we can ensure intelligence professionals have the tools they need to protect us," he said.

Bush is also demanding that Congress grant retroactive immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the NSA program -- a feature not included in the House bill. Critics such as the American Civil Liberties Union say the demand is a tacit admission that the surveillance program was illegal.

In May, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told senators that he and a number of top Justice Department officials were prepared to resign in March 2004 after White House officials tried to override his decision not to recertify the surveillance program's legality. He said top Bush aides Alberto Gonzales, later named attorney general, and Andrew Card tried to pressure Attorney General John Ashcroft -- in a hospital bed recovering from gall-bladder surgery -- to overrule Comey.

A former official familiar with the controversy told CNN in July that the hospital-room dispute was over a previously undisclosed data mining effort, not eavesdropping.

Earlier Wednesday, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the White House will let members review key documents on the legality of the warrantless eavesdropping program after what he called "some loud conversations."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, threatened to hold up action on a FISA overhaul unless the administration produced the documents.

"There wasn't going to be any FISA bill at all unless they played ball with us, and they finally agreed to do that," Rockefeller said.

Rockefeller said the documents the White House has agreed to turn over will be kept under tight restrictions, stored in a secret location away from NSA headquarters, and senators will be limited to having a single staff member review them. In addition, senators can't talk publicly about what they learn from the documents, and any notes taken must be delivered to Capitol Hill by secure courier.

The Intelligence Committee is scheduled to meet Thursday to vote on an updated bill, Rockefeller said. E-mail to a friend

CNN's Deirdre Walsh, Ted Barrett and Jessica Yellin contributed to this report.

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