Sheldon Whitehouse: “both opinion pieces go on at some length about the importance of new legislation on foreign surveillance activities.…”

“both opinion pieces go on at some length about the importance of new legislation on foreign surveillance activities. They devote paragraph after paragraph to this issue. But the two leaders of America's law enforcement and intelligence communities completely ignore, never once mention, the issue that is actually in dispute; that is, on what terms will we allow this administration to spy on Americans? We all agree to unleash our intelligence agencies on foreign targets of foreign surveillance. There is no question there. The heart of the debate is the question of spying on Americans, one, when they are outside the country, or, two, when they are incidentally intercepted by surveillance targeted at someone else. This, the wiretapping of Americans, has been the entire subject of our work on surveillance. And yet Judge Mukasey and Admiral McConnell never once mentioned the topic. There are only two possibilities and each is regrettable. One is that these two gentlemen simply don't know what is going on, which seems unlikely since Director McConnell has participated in hearings on the subject, and we discussed in detail our concern about wiretapping Americans, and members of my staff are working through the details of the issue on a nearly daily basis with lawyers at the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice.”