Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., keeps getting under the skin of the NSA’s biggest supporters with his warnings about intelligence agency abuses — and the latest dispute resulted in a high-profile dustup on the Senate floor on Thursday.
Wyden said the public needs to know about a secret court opinion that found fault with the Trump administration’s use of data collected by the National Security Agency, prompting Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., to warn of “consequences” for “distorting highly classified material.”
The unusually pointed back-and-forth came amid a fight over the reauthorization of a controversial domestic spying program. The barbs exchanged by the senators highlighted how much Wyden has angered colleagues aligned with the NSA who want the spy program to be renewed without changes.
The House of Representatives and Senate have been unable to agree on the future of the program, which is set to expire Thursday night.
Wyden is trying to use that deadline to pry loose the still-classified court opinion, which he says details serious violations of the program’s guidelines.
He is blocking unanimous consent for a 45-day extension of the program, which relies on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Rather, he wants the Senate to agree to a three-week extension of the surveillance program, along with a provision ordering the Trump administration to declassify the opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
“That ruling found serious violations of Americans’ constitutional rights and how the Trump administration has used Section 702,” Wyden said. “Congress should not vote — should not vote — to renew Section 702 when Americans are left in the dark about these troubling abuses,” Wyden said.
Wyden has a long history of trying to pry loose evidence of civil liberties violations by intelligence agencies. Most famously, in 2013, he attempted to force then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to acknowledge the existence of a phone record dragnet months before NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures made it public.
His sometimes-cryptic statements warning about secret spy programs have been dubbed “the Wyden siren.”
They have also drawn the attention of Cotton, who gave an ominous response when Wyden accused him of ducking the court opinion.
“I am ducking nothing. I am pointing out the senator from Oregon’s long-standing practice of distorting highly classified material in public,” Cotton said. “One of these days there are going to be some consequences, and it may be while I’m the chairman of this committee.”
Cotton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Members of Congress are protected from prosecution for comments they make on the floor under the speech or debate clause of the Constitution.
Little has been revealed about the court opinion besides a New York Times report earlier this month that it centered on searches of information about Americans in a vast database of communications that gets around laws on domestic spying because the data is collected abroad.
Wyden noted that current law already requires the court opinion to be declassified and released to the public at some point. He wants that process sped up so that it can take place before Congress votes on a long-term extension of the surveillance program.
“It sure feels like the other side of the aisle is covering the abuses up.”
“Congress must use a short-term extension to openly debate the critical issues in front of the American people. I am disappointed that, instead, it sure feels like the other side of the aisle is covering the abuses up,” he said.
Wyden said a three-week extension would be “more than reasonable,” noting that Congress has had months to negotiate over the program during which little happened, before it became clear that privacy advocates had the votes to block an extension of the law without reforms.
That period is not long enough, Cotton argued, because with a planned weeklong break, senators would have only a short time to hold closed-door meetings on legislation.
Cotton also noted that Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., recently suffered a family tragedy. Warner’s 36-year-old daughter died earlier this month, and he returned to the Senate this week after taking time off. As the highest-ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Warner will play a key role in the negotiations in extending the law.
“I would suggest that comity also counsels that we give a little bit longer than two weeks to a grieving colleague who just had a terrible family tragedy,” Cotton said.
Warner’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
