Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware is recognized.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, we are now going to move to a motion that I offer to recommit the conference report with instructions to add a provision on multipoint wiretaps that was in our original Senate bill.
I send it to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to recommit the conference report on the bill S. 735 to the committee of conference with instructions to the managers on the part of the Senate to disagree to the conference substitute recommended by the committee of conference and insist on inserting the following:
SEC. . REVISION TO EXISTING AUTHORITY FOR MULTIPOINT WIRETAPS.
(a) Section 2518(ll)(b)(ii) of the title 18 is amended: by deleting `of a purpose, on the part of that person, to thwart interception by changing facilities.' and inserting `that the person had the intent to thwart interception or that the person's actions and conduct would have the effect of thwarting interception from a specified facility.'
(b) Section 2518(ll)(b)(iii) is amended to read: `(iii) the judge finds that such showing has been adequately made.'
(c) The amendments made by subsection (a) and (b) of this amendment shall be effective 1 day after the enactment of this Act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will be 30 minutes equally divided.
Mr. BIDEN. I yield myself 2 minutes.
Mr. President, the distinguished Senator, and former Attorney General of the State of Connecticut, is here. We are going to divide this up a little bit. I want to make in my opening statement here a clarification for anyone listening as to what we are doing here, because we are really not changing anything that is not already done in any significant way.
These multipoint wiretaps are made out to be this major new concoction that they have come up with to interfere in the lives of people. I was told in the House conference that some Members of the House thought that it meant that the FBI would be in vans roving down the street literally eavesdropping on people's homes. It is bizarre what people think this means.
Let me explain what has to happen now to get a multipoint wiretap. There are all sorts of provisions built into the law now for the Federal Government: One, the Government must convince a judge that there is probable cause to believe that a specific person is committing a specific crime, as with any other wiretap. Two, the application even to ask a Federal judge for one of these wiretaps is approved at the very top level of the Justice Department, either by the Attorney General herself, or the Deputy Attorney General, or the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. No U.S. attorney in America can go out and ask a judge for one of these. No U.S. attorney can do that. No assistant U.S. attorney can do it without the approval of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, or the head of the Criminal Division.
The application submitted must identify the person involved and believed to be committing the crime, and whose communications are to be the ones intercepted. A judge then has to find that the target's action--that is, the person who they are targeting. Say, we think our reporter here is in fact committing a crime. What you have to do is get the judge to believe that there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, that he is engaging in an activity. And, further, when they decide that you can wiretap not only his home phone, but the mobile phone he has in his pocket, the phone he has in his car, and the pay phone he uses all the time--the judge has to believe that the person is committing the crime--and communications are intercepted, it has to be proved that he is trying to effectively thwart the tap.
For example, if my phone is tapped and there is probable cause that I committed a criminal offense, and I walk every day at 2 o'clock down to the pay phone on the corner, or I use a cell phone and then get rid of the new cell phone every day and get a new one, then that effectively thwarts the ability of the Federal Government investigators to tap someone where there is probable cause that they committed a crime. So that judge has to believe all that before he grants such an order.
In addition, any interception cannot begin until the officers have clearly determined that the target in question--that is, the person they believe committed the crime--is using a particular tapped phone. Once the target is off the phone, the interception must end. It does not say, by the way, that any phone that the target uses can be tapped. It says that we have reason to believe that he is using the following phone, one, two, or three. You can tap those phones.
Once the phone is tapped, if you go to your mother-in-law's house to use the phone, and after you get off, your mother-in-law is off the phone, they cannot, under the law, tap your mother-in-law. They must end the surveillance. It must stop. It must stop.
In addition, the moment the target leaves the phone, the tap on that phone has to be disengaged. It cannot be used. Any evidence cannot be used that would come from such a tap, if it stayed on. So this is nothing new. What is new is that, under the present law, this is used for the mob and other outfits. Under the present law, you have to show that the person is intending to thwart the surveillance--intending to. So essentially what you have to get is a mobster or terrorist saying, `I cannot use this phone in my house anymore because I think it is tapped. I am going to be going other places to use other phones. I will get to you later.' That is what you basically have to prove now.
What we are saying in this law is--and 77 Senators voted for it last year--if the effect of the target is to thwart the surveillance, that is all you need to prove. The effect is to thwart the surveillance. You do not have to prove that he intended to thwart the surveillance; you have to prove the effect is to thwart surveillance.
So, again, a minor change already exists with multipoint wiretaps, is already in place. I will quote Mr. McCollum, the Republican leader of the Criminal Subcommittee. When I offered this in conference, he said:
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I think the reality is quite simple here--
This is McCollum speaking to me.
You are 100 percent right.
I am 100 percent right.
It is the single-most important issue we are not putting in this bill. We have got to find some way to do it. But we are not going to get the votes for this bill, and we could not get the votes for this freestanding bill, I don't think, right this minute in the House.
Get the first part: `It is the single-most important issue we are not putting in the bill.' Mr. McCollum is right.
I yield the remainder of my time to the distinguished Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Delaware. Mr. McCollum was right. Senator Biden was right in everything he said, except for where he said you could not wiretap my mother-in-law. I would like to talk to him later about that.
Mr. BIDEN. If the Senator will yield for 3 seconds. His mother-in-law may be listening.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. She probably is.
Mr. President, let me say first, both to the Senator from Delaware and the Senator from Utah, how very pleased in general I am that we have come as far as we have on this legislation. Over a year ago, President Clinton challenged us to reach a bipartisan consensus on counterterrorism legislation in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City tragedy. The Senate promptly did so, including the Dole-Hatch substitute bill we passed last spring, including in that bill most of the key provisions of the President's own counterterrorism bill offered earlier in the year by Senator Biden and others.
Unfortunately, the Senate's spirit of bipartisanship did not reach the other body and did not, as fully as I think it should, reach the conference itself. The conference has produced a report and a bill that I would term a good bill in the war against terrorism. But it could and should be better. That is why I am supporting Senator Biden's motion to recommit, particularly directing the conference committee to insert this so-called multipoint wiretapping that I was privileged to offer along with Senator Biden and which, as he has indicated, passed the Senate overwhelmingly. Not only was that amendment dropped in conference, but even what I thought was the entirely uncontroversial provision in the Senate bill that would add specific terrorism offenses to the list of crimes for which wiretaps may be authorized was dropped as well. In other words, if there is a suspected terrorist out there now and law enforcement wants to tap his or her phones, they have to do so on suspicion of a crime being committed but it cannot be a terrorist act. They have to find some other specific crime that was committed.
Mr. President, these omissions puzzle me and trouble me. I am afraid that they represent some strange left-right marriage of fear or skepticism or cynicism about the Government and about law enforcement officials particularly. As Senator Biden has said, the power to wiretap--let me say from my own experience and others in law enforcement--is a critically important tool in the hands of law enforcement, and they need that tool not to feather their own nest or build their own empires; they need it to protect us from the criminals, and in this case the terrorists. They are on our side, those who work for the U.S. attorneys, the FBI, the DEA, and the whole range of other law enforcement officials down to the State and local police. They are on our side.
There is somehow a feeling that has grown at the extremes of our political discourse that we have a lot to fear from them. This provision, as Senator Biden has said, incorporates the classically American due process rules to make sure that any wiretap that is obtained is approved by a judge and is applied and used in narrowly and clearly circumscribed ways.
Mr. President, for everything I know about terrorism, the ability to penetrate the highly secretive world of terrorists is the single most effective tool law enforcement officials have to prevent terrorism acts from happening and then to bring the terrorists to justice. We can build barriers around Federal buildings. We can increase law enforcement presence and try to fortify obvious targets. But we can never defend all of the targets of terrorists, because they are cowards. They will look for and strike undefended targets without remorse about killing innocent civilians. You simply cannot protect every target. They will strike everywhere. The object of the terrorist is to create terror and panic. So, the best defense we have against them is an offense, to penetrate their operations and to know that they are about to strike before they strike so we can cut them off. If there was ever a category of crime that warranted the full range of wiretap capacities that law enforcement officials have today, it is terrorism. That is what this amendment would do.
Look. In a way, by not including this amendment that the Senate passed overwhelmingly, more essentially, allowing the terrorist to use all of the tools of modern technology, leave the house phone, go to the cell phone, go to the car phone, go to the phone booth, and we are saying to law enforcement, `Oh, no, you cannot. We are going to make it hard for you to follow them. You are going to have to prove that they are moving with an intent to thwart that wiretap.'
Senator Biden's example is so perfect. Basically we are saying to the law enforcement folks, you have to hear a terrorist say on the phone that, `I got to hang up, John. I'm afraid the FBI is listening to me. I am going to move out to my cell phone.' You need that kind of proof of intent to get, under the current law, this multipoint wiretap.
So we are saying to the bad guys, the criminals, the terrorists, you can use all of this modern telecommunications equipment, but we are going to stop law enforcement from trailing them. It is as if we said during the cold war that we had intelligence information that the Soviet Union had developed some very strong new weapon, that the Pentagon had the ability to counteract that weapon with a defense, but we are going to put strictures on them from using that weapon. It does not make sense. It is why I think it is so important to adopt this amendment.
Mr. President, multipoint wiretaps are used very sparingly because of the requirements that Senator Biden set out. They have proved, however, according to testimony submitted by Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to the Judiciary Committee, highly effective tools in prosecuting today's highly mobile criminals and terrorists who may switch phones frequently for any number of reasons. Again, as we have asked before on other measures, why allow ease of obtaining a multipoint wiretap against other criminals, including organized crime criminals, and not allow it against terrorists who threaten us in such a devastating way?
Mr. President, the aim of this motion to recommit is a simple one. We want to be sure that our law enforcement officials receive the tools they need, the tools that will be there for them so that swift and effective action can be taken to prevent the World Trade Center explosion, to prevent Oklahoma City, to prevent any future disaster of that kind. We owe our Federal law enforcement officials that authority, that capacity, those tools. But the truth is we owe it to ourselves. They are out there trying to protect us and our families from being innocent victims of a terrorist. Every counterterrorism expert that I have ever talked to or ever heard, within the Government and without, will emphasize the importance of infiltration and surveillance in countering terrorists and bringing them to justice. Given the devastating effects of these acts, not only the maiming and death of men, women, and children, but these acts are assaults on the institutions of our Government, on the democratic processes which we cherish, and on our fundamental liberty to move safely and confidently throughout our society. They create the kind of fear that undercuts the freedom that we have fought for.
So I do not understand why we would not want to give the law enforcement officials the same authority to obtain wiretaps when pursuing terrorists that they have under current law to pursue other kinds of criminals, and why we do not want to improve their ability to track all criminals, including terrorists, as they move from phone to phone and from place to place with the obvious intent of thwarting surveillance and covering their treacherous, deadly deeds.
Mr. President, finally, I say we need to give the conferees another chance to strengthen this bill. As I said at the outset, it is a good bill, but it can and should be a better bill. I fear that, if we do not include a power like this one, that we are going to come to a day when we are going to look back and regret it--a terrorist act that will occur that could have been stopped if law enforcement had this authority.
I know we want to pass this bill and have the President sign it by the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City tragedy, but the truth is that I would rather see us do this right, do it as strongly and effectively as we can. And if it takes a few more days, so be it. We have waited this long. We can wait a little longer to protect ourselves, our society, the institutions of our Government, and the basic freedom to live and move around in our great country from the horrible acts of terrorists within our midst.
I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
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Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, how much time remains?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah has 15 minutes and the Senator from Delaware has 1 minute and 54 seconds.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I do not disagree with my two distinguished colleagues on that side that this might be a useful provision. After all, I wrote it, and we put it in the Senate bill. I drafted the multipoint language in the Senate bill. However, since that time, some have raised, in their eyes, serious questions as to whether this expanded authority to wiretap American citizens and others is necessary.
Because of that, we have worked out this bill through a long series of meetings for over a year, culminating Monday night in a conference where we put everything in this bill we could possibly get into it. We brought it very close to what the original Senate bill was. I think it is a darned good bill. We could not get the other side to agree on this provision. It comes down to whether we want a bill or we do not.
To this end, because of that, then I insisted we at least put in a study, a balanced study to look at the excesses of law enforcement with regard to wiretapping and the needs of law enforcement with regard to wiretapping and the applications of it. The distinguished Senator from Connecticut and I both understand how important it is, and so does, of course, the ranking Democrat on the committee. We will require the Justice Department to review its law enforcement surveillance needs and report back to Congress.
On that basis, I just want to say that I am committed to working with both Senator Biden and Senator Lieberman to craft legislation which will provide law enforcement with the electronic surveillance capabilities it needs, wiretap authority it needs. I am going to get this done one way or the other in an appropriate way, but the study is important in the eyes of those on the other side. It is important in my eyes.
I do not want to go into this thing halfcocked, nor do I want to lose this bill because others feel we may be moving into it halfcocked without having looked at it in a balanced way. So I will work with both of my colleagues to craft legislation to provide law enforcement with whatever wiretap authority, expanded wiretap authority it needs beyond what it has today. I give my colleagues my assurance that we will move in this direction with dispatch. I think they both know, when I say that, I mean it. The truth, however, is that this provision would have done nothing--and I repeat nothing--to stop the Oklahoma bombing. This is not antiterrorism legislation that would have been necessary to stop the Oklahoma bombing. While multipoint wiretaps may be useful in crime investigation, we simply do not need to put them in this particular legislation at this time.
Last evening, Israel was bombed in another bombing attack. I personally do not believe we should wait one more day--knowing that is going on over there and knowing that we have at least 1,500 known terrorists and organizations in this Nation, I do not think we should wait one more day, not one more hour in my book, in voting for final passage of this bill. We want to assure that terrorist funding is prohibited and stopped, and this bill goes a long way toward doing that.
Let me mention for the record the letters of support that we have for this bill. They are wide ranging and across the political spectrum: The National Association of Attorneys General, the National Association of Police Officers, the National District Attorneys Association, the Anti-Defamation League, Survivors of the Oklahoma Bombing, Citizens for Law and Order, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs Association, the National Troopers Association, the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, 34 individual State attorneys general including the California attorney general, California's District Attorneys Association, the National Government Association with regard to the habeas corpus provision, and various Governors, and so forth. It is okayed by the Governor of Oklahoma, who is a Republican, Frank Keating, and by the Democrat attorney general, with whom I have had a great deal of joy working, Drew Edmonson. I have a lot of respect for him, and he has been willing to work with us to try to get this done.
Frankly, we do not have a letter, but we do have the verbal support of AIPAC, and I might say other attorneys general in this country who have written to us and want to be mentioned. We will put that all in the Record.
This is important. This bill is important. I know my colleagues know I am sincere when I say I will find some way of resolving these multipoint wiretap problems. Unfortunately, they were called roving wiretaps when they came up, and just that rhetorical term has caused us some difficulties and has caused some of the people who feel, after Waco, Ruby Ridge, Good Ol' Boys Roundup, et cetera, that even law enforcement sometimes is too intrusive into all of our lives, and at this particular time of the year, at tax time, with the feelings about the IRS, there are some who literally feel this is going too far and it will kill this bill if we put it in.
So I will move ahead. We will have the study, but I will move ahead even while the study is being conducted and do everything I can with my two colleagues here to get this problem resolved. I intend to do it, and we will get it done.
I am going to move to table this. I hope folks will vote for the motion to table so that we can continue to preserve this bill and get it done, quit playing around with it and get it done. I yield the floor.
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Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware has 1 minute 54 seconds remaining.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, if the problem is people misunderstand because this is a roving wiretap, one thing that will get everybody's attention is we amend it, send it back, and it will become real clear. In about 20 minutes of discussion, we can have it back here, and it will not kill the bill--if that is the reason.
No. 2, in the letter from the chiefs, the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, they do support the bill but they are very clear. Let me quote. They say:
This legislation does not deal with the ability of law enforcement to use roving wiretaps or 48-hour wiretaps in the case of terrorism even though this later type of wiretap is already authorized in other special situations.
They list what they do not like about the bill. They do not like the fact that this is not in the bill. They strongly support this wiretap authority. And if we cannot get it done now in this bill, I respectfully suggest to my friend that no matter how much he wishes to fix this, there will be no ability to get it done standing alone.
I yield back whatever seconds I may have remaining.
Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. HATCH. The fact is that we have to pass this bill. Frankly, I think we can get this problem solved. It is kind of a world turned upside down. When I got here 20 years ago, it was the conservatives who wanted expanded wiretap authority and the liberals fought it with everything they had. But now all of a sudden we have the liberals fighting for wiretap authority and conservatives concerned about it.
The fact is it is not just the rhetoric. There is some sincere concern on the part of some Members of the House who are crucial to the passage of this bill about putting this in at this time. I believe we can resolve this problem in the future, and I will work hard to do it with my colleagues, but it really cannot be in this bill if we want a terrorism bill at this time.
I yield back the remainder of my time. On behalf of Senator Dole and myself, I move to table the motion and ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to table the motion to recommit. The yeas and nays have been ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Florida [Mr. Mack] is necessarily absent.
Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Breaux] is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber who desire to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 58, nays 40, as follows:
So the motion to table the motion to recommit was agreed to.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. HATCH. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I send to the desk a motion and ask for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from New York [Mr. Moynihan] moves to recommit the conference report on the bill S. 735.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent reading of the motion be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The text of the motion to recommit is as follows:
Motion to recommit the conference report on the bill S. 735 to the committee of conference with instructions to the managers on the part of the Senate to disagree to the conference substitute recommended by the committee of conference and insist on deleting the following:
`(d) An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim--
`(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or
`(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.';
from section 104 of the conference report'.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the distinguished ranking member and manager have asked that I yield myself such time as I may require, and I add with the proviso, as much time as he wishes. I will obviously yield to him.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 15 minutes.