U.S. House defeats stopgap extension of spy program

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a victory for President George W.Bush, the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday defeated aDemocratic bid to temporarily extend an expiring spy lawinstead of replacing it with a new measure that also wouldimmunize telephone companies from lawsuits.

Working against a Saturday deadline when the ProtectAmerica Act expires, the House voted 229-191 against a 21-dayextension. Thirty-four Democrats joined with Republicans todefeat the bill.

Hours before the vote, Bush vowed to veto what would havebeen a second short-term extension of the bill.

He pushed for House passage of a bill approved by theSenate on Tuesday that would replace the law and shield fromlawsuits phone companies that cooperated with the warrantlesssurveillance program he secretly began after the September 11,2001 attacks on the United States.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stood firm in opposing toSenate bill. If the law expires it would not undermine nationalsecurity despite Republican warnings to the contrary, theMaryland Democrat said.

Hoyer noted the administration could extend ongoingsurveillance operations for one year and begin new ones withcourt orders.

While final decisions were not made, Hoyer said he did notexpect to bring another extension to the House for a vote.

Bush told reporters it was time to end the debate, vowing:"I will not accept any temporary extension."

Democrats who control the House said they needed up tothree weeks to review and possibly offer revisions to theSenate bill, which would extend the government's expandedpowers to track communications between terrorism suspectswithout a court order.

The Senate bill would also shield telecommunicationcompanies from potentially billions of dollars in civil damagesand bolster protection of the privacy rights of Americans sweptup in the hunt for enemy targets.

The House Democrats' chief objection has been the corporateimmunity. They say the courts should decide whether companiesviolated the law.

About 40 civil lawsuits have been filed accusing AT&T,Verizon Communications and Sprint Nextel of violatingAmericans' privacy rights by helping the warrantless domesticspying program that Bush secretly began shortly after thehijacked airliner attacks.

Bush and his fellow Republicans would like to use issuessuch as domestic spying to paint the Democrats as weak oncounterterrorism and national security in the presidentialelection campaign.

Bush repeated his warnings that enemies of the UnitedStates were plotting new attacks that would dwarf September 11.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a MichiganDemocrat, accused the administration of "bluster andfear-mongering."

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requiresthat the government receive the approval of a secret FISA courtto conduct surveillance in the United States of suspectedforeign enemy targets.

But Bush authorized warrantless surveillance ofcommunications between people in the United States and othersoverseas if one had suspected ties to terrorists.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Donna Smith andMatt Spetalnick, editing by Vicki Allen and Alan Elsner)