| By Ankush Khardori on Eat The Press After a week in which we saw an across-the-board failing on the part of reporters at the nation's top newspapers to report accurately on Arlen Specter's NSA surveillance bill, the Washington Post has published a strong, must-read editorial that debunks the lies and half-truths in circulation thanks to Arlen Specter, his staff, and countless administration officials. Specter's bill, which was being touted alternatively as a "compromise" or a "concession" on the part of the White House, is in fact no such thing. As the Post writes, "It isn't a compromise, except quite dramatically on the senator's part." Whereas various news reports stated that the White House would be required to submit the NSA surveillance program for judicial review, the truth is that the administration would be under no legal obligation to do so. The FISA court's involvement under Specter's bill would also mark a dramatic departure from how surveillance operations have been conducted in the past. Instead of requiring the government to seek particularized warrants for each person it seeks to put under surveillance, Specter would allow the government to go to the FISA court for program-by-program approval -- a "concession" that, as Representative Jane Harman has suggested, might actually violate the Fourth Amendment. Furthermore, the Post writes, "the government could get permission for long-term programs involving large numbers of innocent individuals with only a showing that the program is, in general, legal and that it is 'reasonably designed' to capture the communications of 'a person reasonably believed to have communication with' a foreign power or terrorist group." Specter's bill would also "effectively repeal FISA's current requirement that all domestic national security surveillance take place under its terms" by adding language that explicitly incorporates the White House's expansive theory of executive power -- like, for example, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the President to collect intelligence with respect to foreign powers and agents of foreign powers." It's hard to imagine that the Bush administration could get any more of what it wants from Congress than what Specter would give away, but these facts were all in short supply in the coverage of Specter's bill last week. The Post's editorials are, of course, unsigned, but the editorial board's Benjamin Wittes specializes in legal affairs. Wittes, or whoever drafted the editorial, ought to be commended for producing something that actually bears some resemblance to reality, and it should be required reading for the journalists covering the Specter bill. Although reporters are trained to immerse themselves in the details of subjects that are new to them -- and, for the most part, they do so admirably and far better than the majority of their critics ever could -- on complicated legal issues like this, it's extremely easy for them to get spun and outflanked by administration officials and lawyers. In this instance, that appears to be exactly what has happened. Specter and his staff, for their part, ought to be ashamed that they're either completely incompetent and drafted a bill that would do nothing they claim it would, or, more likely, that they're trying to pull one over on the American public. While numerous reporters at the nation's top papers have unfortunately been unwittingly enlisted in this effort, it's not too late for things to be turned around. This is one of the biggest legal stories since the start of the Bush administration, and it should receive treatment commensurate to its importance. The journalists and editors who have so far fumbled this story ought to try and set things straight in the days ahead -- even if this requires facing up, conspicuously or otherwise, to the fact that their reporting to date has been inaccurate at best and downright misleading at worst. 
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