How to Save the Constitution, and a Few Other Things

by Brian Beutler, The Media Consortium: Fri., Jul 11, 2008
Filed under: Congressional Oversight

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Often touted as presidential timber, Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin last year abandoned the playing field of the presidential contest to continue his mission as one of the Senate’s most outspoken defenders of civil liberties. Yesterday, the Senate passed into law the Protect America Act, a bill that expands executive power to spy on Americans and grants retroactive immunity from lawsuits to telecom companies who provide customers’ private records to the government. On June 26, just as senators were preparing for final debates on the bill, which eliminates many of the civil liberties protections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Feingold talked to Brian Beutler about civil liberties, John McCain, the worst thing President Bush has done — and what a President Obama should say in his inaugural address.

BRIAN BEUTLER: So starting on FISA (and the Protect America Act), a lot of people were impressed with the House Democrats’ performance back in February when they Senate bill (that extended the warrantless wiretapping program). In the interim, what happened? Where was the pressure coming from within the Democratic party to revisit this issue and not wait at least until there was a new administration in place?

SEN. RUSSELL FEINGOLD: This is just really amazing to me, because there’s always the pressure on this. There’s a very interesting thing that happens with these where people get fired up and people really have good instincts about civil liberties and would really prefer to be on this side. I think that’s what they really believe in. So you get kind of a head of steam, which I noticed happened with the blocking of the reauthorization of the Patriot Act for a while, until people caved. And it happened for a while even in the Senate on the PAA. But what was a surprise was what the House did. I mean that was really impressive that a group of people, including Steny Hoyer and others, stood up and said, “No, we’re not gonna do this.”

But the problem is that there’s this fear, that sort of grows over time, that somehow Democrats are gonna get hit over the head by claims that they’re soft on terrorism. And it always rears its head, especially when we’re heading into a recess period or an election period. What’s happening right now is that they claim that the problem is that the. We were able to make the argument early in the year that the orders were lasting for a year. So even if the law expired, the orders allowing the surveillance were still in place. Until August. Well, we’re coming up to August.

Now the truth is that we could simply extend the bill for a year, sunset it. We could extend the orders. But as you get closer to these deadlines, the administration uses these intimidation tactics, and far too many Democrats fall for it. They think that somehow the administration’s gonna win this argument. I don’t think that’s true. I think the Democrats did great the last few months when the House stood up to them. But there is this sort of inertia — if that’s the right word — that leads to ultimately the caving of very large numbers of Democrats, even voting for an awful piece of legislation like this. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. I don’t know, the day-to-day pressure — it’s like this constantly pulsating fear of being accused of being soft on terrorism.

BB: Following up on that, then. How, politically, does one change that mindset — that being tough on national security means that the Democratic party has to support wars and the erosion of civil liberties?

RF: I think you show people that those who stand firm on this do just fine politically. I like to think of myself as an example of that. There are many people like that. The truth is that if you properly articulate that you want to balance national security and make sure we protect civil liberties at the same time. And take the time to go through the arguments — which are very frankly easy to win — these are not hard arguments. When anybody really listens to it, they just kinda shake their head. Then you can prevail and show people that you don’t need to buckle at the knees on this. But it requires a little patience. It requires a little faith in peoples’ willingness to listen. And that’s how in the long run you prevail. And I’m hoping that a lot of people who run this time, unlike a lot of people who ran in 2006, are held accountable.

I’m sure many of our candidates are gonna say, you know, I was against immunity and I don’t like this bill. Well, they need to be held accountable when they get here. And that hasn’t really happened. We have a lot of Democrats, even some who voted to get us out of iraq, who aren’t voting properly on this, in a way that is, you know frankly, very damaging to our efforts to improve the bill.

BB: I understand. So you don’t think that (in the next administration) an Attorney General Feingold or a Director of National Intelligence Feingold would be crucial?

RF: I certainly don’t think it’s crucial, and I think that the place I am right now — where I sit on the intelligence committee, the foreign relations committee and the judiciary committee — gives me a really unique angle on this. I think I may be the only person that has that combination of committees that relates to all of these issues.

BB: That’s why I requested the interview.

RF: I think it gives me a rather unique opportunity to pursue these issues. In the Senate. So I think that might be the best place for it.

BB: Assuming this passes the Senate, what’s the fix? Is there one? And when?

RF: Hopefully, under President Obama he will acknowledge, as he has in the past, not only how outrageous this immunity is — although that’s gonna be very hard to deal with because the horse may already be out of the barn — but I think, even more importantly, he will have an opportunity to review these very expanded powers that are given to the government to surveil our international communications. And to say, look, we need legislation that has some sort of court review and mechanisms for control of this, because it’s completely lawless. Now, if he doesn’t do it it’ll be very sad. And, in fact, my feeling, of course, is: let’s not let this go through now. It’s much harder to pass something and change it after the fact. But you know, I’m hoping we’ll have both houses (of Congress) and I’m hoping Obama will understand how important this is. And that will be a golden opportunity for him to correct one of many things that needs to be corrected from this administration. So I’m hoping it starts as early as January 20th.

BB: ….If the (telecom) immunity provision (to the Protect America Act) does go through, the way I see it there are two possibilities for discovery of what exactly the Bush administration was doing with the Terrorist Surveillance Program (the administration’s name for its warrantless surveillance of Americans and others). One is with the inspector general reports that the bill authorizes. I know a lot of people make fun of the idea of the administration investigating itself. But Glenn Fine (inspector general for the Department of Justice) is an interesting character…

RF: Yeah, he’s been very independent and very credible. You can expect something very good from that in terms of credibility, I agree with that. There’s no question there, that you know that’s one small positive piece here.

BB: Can the Bush administration just ignore that or signing-statement it out of existence, and if the IG (inspector general) process doesn’t work, would you believe that a (President) Obama would reveal to the Congress or the country just what was happening back in the TSP days?

RF: I don’t know what he’d reveal. I do believe he’d take the IG provisions seriously if, for some reason, this administration does not. I do think he’d take any conclusions they’d come to seriously. So that’s the good news, is that I really do think that he would. And he would have no reason not to. It’s not his administration. He’s a person that has been very associated with the rule of law in his career. So a President Obama to me would be somebody who, if there is a failure to follow through on this, who may well help us have follow up on this.

BB: Would a McCain presidency mean the continuation of these sorts of–

RF: –You know, I think McCain would be better on this than the current administration, to be candid with you. There’ve been some remarks that he’s made about — even though he’s pulled back some on telecom immunity — he’s said that he would do no signing statements. I think he knows and his people know that this administration is just out of control and is just really, lawless. But the difference between Obama and McCain on the specifics would be significant. I think that Obama would be far more likely to insist on some court review and some protections against things like bulk collection of information, reverse targeting of Americans. There’s no question he would understand that and I would hope we’d have a much better shot at him trying to correct those problems than Senator McCain.

BB: And what about for the state of the broader national security state and civil liberties state? What would a McCain presidency mean beyond FISA? So, national security letters, torture, REAL ID –

RF: I think he’d be much better than the current administration, because he has sensitivity to issues like torture. He’s shown some sensitivity — not so much in his voting but in his comments — about some of the other issues. But again, Obama’s far more likely to take the viewpoint that I take across the board, which is that the range of these power grabs in this administration have to be pulled back. And I would urge him to make that very statement in the inaugural address.

I’ve written an op-ed that was published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this Sunday — this past Sunday — which says look, this new president, whoever it is, has to renounce these extreme powers, or its gonna start getting locked into our constitutional history. Right now the position of this administration is an outlier in the terms of our constitutional history. If this new president doesn’t renounce it and say, look we’ve gotta get this back in balance, then we will have altered the nature of our very Constitution. So this is a critical turning point in the constitutional history of America. All right. I’m running out of time.

BB: Do you have two more minutes?

RF: Okay.

BB: Okay…off the top of my head I counted several examples of the civil liberties and national securities state run amok. There was FISA, torture, national security letters, REAL ID, the border fence — it goes on and on.

RF: There’s a lot.

BB: There’s a lot. I mean obviously there’s a mindset in play here. But assuming that the mindset doesn’t change, what’s been the most egregious thing that’s occurred in the last seven years and what’s the most important to scale back.

RF: It would be, I think, the overall assertion that, under Article II of the Constitution, the president can look at a clear statute that’s been signed into law and ignore it because of his so-called commander-in-chief powers. Whether that means a justification for warrantless wiretapping, whether that means saying, look, I can do whatever I want on torture. That overall assertion is the thing that underlies many of the specifics, and that’s the one that needs to be pushed back to the Youngstown Steel case test articulated by Justice Jackson.

BB: Assuming that doesn’t happen, which is the most odious piece of legislation of the last seven years or the–

RF: –The legislation isn’t as much the problem as, for example, the warrantless wiretapping program…I would say the illegal warrantless wiretapping program (which was instituted by executive order).

BB: And the last question is a sort of procedural one. It’s about the filibuster (by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.) that you supported back in December. Why haven’t we seen more of that on certain issues, when controversial legislation has gotten to the floor…

RF: Actually I’ve been doing that consistently on issues for years and years, including this issue. I started working on this issue in December 2005. And I was out there trying to slow down the Patriot Act in the first place. I was the principle person using procedural techniques to prevent the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. I was equal partner with Sen. Dodd on the filibuster on this. I have tried to use it. Other senators are not as excited about it. But you know I have very strong views on these issues. And they do know that, at least with regard to my approach, they have to go through a fair amount of procedural stuff (such as being made to debate, as they did this week, the amendment Feingold offered with Dodd to the Protect America Act) if it’s something this bad. It should probably be done more, because, in the Senate, if you show that you’re gonna inflict a little pain in terms of time, sometimes you can, you know, get somewhere. Like we’re doing here. Well, this thing will still go through, but we’re making them realize that it’s not going to be easy, and that’s very important.