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House Defeats Effort to Rein In N.S.A. Data Gathering House Defeats Effort to Rein In N.S.A. Data Gathering
(35 minutes later)
WASHINGTON — A divided House defeated legislation Wednesday that would have blocked the National Security Agency from collecting vast amounts of phone records, handing the Obama administration a hard-fought victory in the first Congressional showdown on intelligence policy since Edward J. Snowden’s security breaches last month. WASHINGTON — A deeply divided House defeated legislation Wednesday that would have blocked the National Security Agency from collecting vast amounts of phone records, handing the Obama administration a hard-fought victory in the first congressional showdown over the N.S.A.'s surveillance activities since Edward J. Snowden’s security breaches last month.
But the bipartisan coalition, pressing to rein in the N.S.A., vowed that increasing outrage unleashed by Mr. Snowden’s leaks would overwhelm opposition in the coming months. The 205-to- 217 vote was far closer than expected and came after a brief but impassioned debate over a citizen’s right to privacy and the steps the government must take to protect national security. It was a rare instance in which a classified intelligence program was openly discussed on the House floor, and the issue led to some unusual coalitions. Conservative Republicans leery of what they see as Obama administration abuses of power teamed with liberal Democrats long opposed to intrusive intelligence programs. The Obama administration made common cause with the House Republican leadership to try to block it.
The 217-205 vote was far closer than expected and displayed the shifting allegiances and fierce lobbying on both sides. Conservative Republicans — leery of what they see as Obama administration abuses of power — teamed with liberal Democrats long opposed to intrusive intelligence programs in a left-right coalition. The Obama administration made common cause with the House Republican leadership to try to block it. House members pressing to reign in the N.S.A. vowed afterward that the outrage unleashed by Mr. Snowden’s disclosures would eventually put a brake on the agency’s activities. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and a longtime critic of post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts, said proponents will keep coming back with legislation to curtail the dragnets for “metadata” — whether through phone records or Internet surveillance. At the very least, the section of the Patriot Act in question will be allowed to expire in 2015.
“It’s going to end — now or later,” Mr. Nadler said. “The only question is when and on what terms.”
Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, promised lawmakers he would draft legislation this fall to add more privacy protections to government surveillance programs even as he begged the House to oppose blanket restrictions.
The amendment to the annual Defense Department spending bill, written by Representatives Justin Amash, a libertarian Republican from Western Michigan, and John Conyers, a veteran liberal Democrat from Detroit, turned Democrat against Democrat and Republican against Republican.
It would have limited N.S.A. phone surveillance to specific targets of law-enforcement investigations, not broad dragnets. It was only one of a series of proposals — from restricting funds for Syrian rebels to adding congressional oversight to foreign aid to Egypt — designed to check President Obama’s foreign and intelligence policies.
But in the N.S.A. phone surveillance program, the House’s right and left wings appeared to find a unifying cause. Representative Raul Labrador, Republican of Idaho, called it “the wingnut coalition” and Mr. Amash “the chief wingnut.”
Mr. Amash framed his push as a defense of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, and he claimed a surprising ally, Representative James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin and one of the principal authors of the PATRIOT Act after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Sensenbrenner said his handiwork was never meant to create a program that allows the government to demand the phone records of every American.
“The time has come to stop it,” Mr. Sensenbrenner said.
Opposing them were not only House Speaker John A. Boehner and President Obama, but the leaders of the nation’s defense and intelligence establishment..
On Tuesday, the director of the National Security Agency, General Keith Alexander spent hours providing classified briefings to lawmakers about the program, and the White House took the unusual step of issuing a statement urging lawmakers not to approve it. On Wednesday, the retired Marine Corps General James L. Jones, who was Mr. Obama’s national security adviser from 2009-2010, added his name to an open letter in support of preserving the N.S.A. programs that had been signed by more than half a dozen top national-security officials from the Bush administration.
“Denying the NSA such access to data will leave the Nation at risk,” said the letter, which lawmakers and staffers who opposed Mr. Amash’s amendment circulated to undecided members.
Mr. Rogers took a personal swipe at Mr. Amash, a darling of social media, when he said the House is not in the business of racking up “like’s” on Facebook. He also said that calling log program was an important tool for protecting against terrorist attacks.
“This is not a game,” he fumed. “This is real. It will have real consequences.”
But many rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats appeared impervious to such overtures. Representative Jared Polis, Democrat of Colorado and a supporter of the amendment, said if the Obama administration felt strongly about defending the program, Mr. Obama would have spoken out personally. Instead, the White House released its official statement of opposition under the name of press secretary Jay Carney.
“The press secretary says hundreds of things every day,” Mr. Polis shrugged.
The divisions in Congress seemed to reflect the ambivalence in the nation as a whole. In a CBS News poll released Wednesday, 67 percent of Americans said the government’s collection of phone records is a violation of privacy. At the same time, 52 percent called it a necessary tool to help find terrorists.
But the final tally suggested the tide was shifting on the issue. In the weeks that followed the Snowden leaks, the united voices of congressional leaders and administration officials in support of the N.S.A. programs seemed to squelch the outrage Mr. Snowden had hoped for. Instead, anger seemed to be more trained on Mr. Snowden then on the programs he revealed.
As the media and the government chronicled Mr. Snowden’s transnational flight from law enforcement, a web of privacy activists, libertarian conservatives and liberal civil liberties proponents rallied support behind congressional action. House members said they received hundreds of phone calls and e-mails ahead of Wednesday’s vote, all in favor of curtailing the N.S.A.'s authority.
Ultimately, 94 House Republicans defied their leadership; 111 Democrats — a majority of the Democratic Caucus — defied their president.
“This is only the beginning,” Mr. Conyers vowed after the vote. The fight will now shift to the Senate, where longtime critics of N.S.A. surveillance Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, and Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, immediately took up the cause.
“National security is of paramount importance, yet the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records violates innocent Americans’ privacy rights and should not continue as its exists today,” Mr. Udall said after the vote. “The U.S. House of Representatives’ bipartisan vote today proposal should be a wake-up call for the White House.”
The real fight is likely to come this fall with the annual intelligence policy bill. Both Mr. Rogers and Representative C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, loudly denounced the Amash amendment. “Mr. Ruppersberger called it an “extreme kneejerk reaction” that “goes to far too fast.”
But they also extended an olive branch to its proponents. After spending weeks ardently defending the surveillance efforts, the intelligence committee leaders promised reforms when they begin drafting the intelligence authorization act.

Charlie Savage contributed reporting.