Patriot Act renewal lacks crucial support

WASHINGTON — A tentative agreement to renew the Patriot Act this week teetered late Wednesday without explicit support of the lead Senate negotiator, as Democrats complained that the draft wouldn't sufficiently curb the FBI's power to probe the most private aspects of people's lives.

Hours after House and Senate negotiators said they had reached a tentative pre-dawn agreement, Democrats and civil libertarians complained that it didn't address their chief concern: the curbing of FBI power to gather certain information by requiring the investigators to prove the subject's records are connected to a foreign agent or government.

"It gives a nod toward checks and balances without fixing the most fundamental flaws in the Patriot Act," said Lisa Graves of the Americans Civil Liberties Union.

At least four Democratic senators announced their displeasure with the proposal, joined by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., had hoped to reach an agreement that his counterpart, ranking Democrat Pat Leahy of Vermont, could support. But by dinnertime, Specter had scheduled — then canceled — a news conference on the Patriot Act. His office said only that negotiations were continuing.

The agreement, which would make most provisions of the existing law permanent, was reached just before dawn Wednesday. But by midmorning GOP leaders had already made plans for a House vote today and a Senate vote by the end of the week. That would put the centerpiece of President Bush's war on terror on his desk before Thanksgiving, a month before more than a dozen provisions were set to expire.

Officials negotiating the deal described it on condition of anonymity because the draft is not official and has not been signed by any of the 34 conferees.

Any deal would mark Congress' first revision of the law passed a few weeks after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. In doing so, lawmakers said they tried to find the nation's comfort level with expanded law-enforcement power in the post-9/11 era — a task that carries extra political risks for all 435 members of the House and a third of the Senate facing midterm elections next year.

For Bush, too, such a renewal would come at a sensitive time. With his approval ratings slipping in his second term, the president could bolster a tough-on-terrorism image.