Topic: Newsmax
In a Dec. 17 Newsmax article repeating Republican Sen. Kit Bond's assertions about what the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran "should have emphasized," Ronald Kessler wrote:
Even more disturbing to Bond are votes by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama last August against revising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to take account of technological changes.
“The country was at risk last summer,” Bond says. “We were not able to go up on new targets and obtain new information. The FISA court said in a classified letter to the intelligence community—and I was authorized to say it on the floor—that the FISA process for intercepting communications had been brought to a stop.”
As a result, if Clinton and Obama had prevailed, “We would not have been able to collect signals intelligence from key al Qaeda and other terrorist leaders abroad, calling to their allies in Iraq or perhaps in the United States. Essentially they would’ve shut down the program,” Bond says. “We’d have been out of business.”
In fact, Clinton, Obama, and other Democrats who opposed the bill passed in August did not do so because they opposed revising FISA "to take account of technological changes." As the New York Times reported and Media Matters noted, the main point of contention was court oversight of the warrantless wiretapping program. Democrats wanted meaningful court oversight; Republicans didn't.
Kessler has a long history of misleading his readers about FISA provisions and Democrats' views on them.
