House Democrats Pull FISA Bill

ABC News’ Jason Ryan Reports: A controversial bill dealing with secret wiretapping was pulled from the House floor Wednesday by the Democratic leadership as a vote was about to take place.

The House and Senate have been considering changes to the legislation which authorizes electronic surveillance inside the US. The Democratic leadership expects to reintroduce the bill next week.

FISA is the law that has regulated secret warrants for wiretaps that target terrorists and foreign agents, it was set up under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Democrats were concerned that Republicans would have prevailed on a technical motion that says nothing in the bill should interfere with the surveillance of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. In a statement House Majority Leader Steney Hoyer said, "they have offered an amendment that, if passed, would have substantially delayed this important legislation — which is designed to protect the American people by proposing language already provided in the bill."

Republicans, unsurprisingly, didn’t see it that way.  "Our proposal gives Democrats a very simple choice: They can allow our intelligence officials to conduct surveillance on likes of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda or prohibit them from doing so and jeopardize our national security," Republican leader John Boehner R-Ohio said in a statement. 

The Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to start marking up their FISA legislation Wednesday afternoon in a closed meeting. According to a committee source on Tuesday several staffers were given access to the Presidential authorizations for the controversial NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program. TSP allowed the NSA to intercept suspected Al Qaeda communications without a warrant if one end of the communication inside the US.

The staffers were also given access at the White House to the Justice Department opinions about the program which established its legal justification.

Wednesday at a press conference President Bush addressed the issue saying, "We found common ground on FISA. My only question is: Why change a good law? The way that law was written works for the security of the country."

In August, Congress passed, and President Bush signed into law, The Protect America Act which provided fixes to the FISA bill which was sought by the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department. The FISA legislation passed by Congress in August, provided a fix to the government’s ability to intercept foreign to foreign communications that were on US communication circuits and internet fiber lines. The legislation was only temporary and is due to expire in February.

As the House and Senate begin to handle their legislation more debate is expected about language that exempts telecommunication firms from litigation for complying with government requests in national security investigations.

Dean Norland contributed to this report