Arlen Specter: “All of this effort to get the floor and I will yield right away? Absolutely not. The point of the time is not to show…”

“All of this effort to get the floor and I will yield right away? Absolutely not. The point of the time is not to show what they have gotten is valuable. The time is in order to enable them to conduct an investigation. They got the order initially because they showed a judge, an impartial magistrate, that there was a reason to think if the target knew, it would impede the investigation. I will let my 98 colleagues evaluate whether that is a compromise on civil liberties. The letter which the Senator from Idaho refers to, which was filed yesterday and printed in the Record, I have already put the reply into the Record, which we circulated today. In that letter, the assertion made that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is not permitted to make an individualized decision about whether to impose a gag order when it issues a section 215 order is incorrect. That is not right. The statute provides there may be a petition to have the court review the 215 order and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has the authority at that point to say there will be no gag order. When the Senator from Idaho puts in his letter that they want a sunset on the national security letter, I point out to him the PATRIOT Act does not establish the national security letter. That has been in existence for decades.”