Specter wants answers on intel programs

WASHINGTON -- A key senator who is updating an intelligence bill said Tuesday he won't support expanded legal immunity for telecommunications companies until the Bush administration provides more details of its secret intelligence programs.

"I won't buy a pig in a poke," said Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican who can block or shape parts of the bill.

In letters to a House committee released this week, the telecommunications companies said they deserve legal protection for giving law enforcement agencies customers' telephone and Internet information in public safety emergencies.

The letters sent by AT&T, Verizon and Qwest to the House Energy and Commerce Committee are their latest attempt to include retroactive immunity in the update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The companies face about 40 lawsuits alleging they have illegally helped the federal government perform surveillance on and obtain telephone records of American customers since 2001.

The New York Times reported in December 2005 that the Bush administration tapped American phone calls with overseas intelligence targets without obtaining warrants. In May 2006, USA TODAY reported the National Security Agency had collected telephone records of millions of Americans with the help of the phone companies, including AT&T.

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The civil cases, which allege the companies violated customers' civil liberties, wreak a "great financial and reputational costs" on the companies, writes AT&T Executive Vice President Wayne Watts. The companies, he writes, are forced by government secrecy rules to "remain mute" even if they never participated in an intelligence program.

Despite the companies' statements, the House is scheduled to vote today on a foreign intelligence surveillance bill that lacks lawsuit immunity. On Thursday, the Senate is set to begin deliberations on a companion bill that may contain a "limited" form of retroactive immunity, according to Wendy Morigi, spokeswoman for Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.