Controversial spy program set to expire

0:05Asha Rangappa:This is one of the most important tools we have, particularly in a time of war and major hostile adversarial threats. I think it's really, really an important tool that we need to have. Uproar in Congress over the Trump loyalist nominated for a top spy position is starting to derail some legislation.

0:35It's Thursday, June 11th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:44Today on the show, anti-immigrant violence continues in the UK after an asylum seeker from Sudan allegedly stabbed a man in Belfast. Also, the Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming is being drained to prop up Lake Powell, which is dangerously close to the point of not being able to generate power from its hydroelectric dam. A marina owner at Flaming Gorge says his dock has already sunk seven feet since April. We had a third of our freaking customers counts. They call us up and they say, oh, the water's gone, the water's gone. we're not going to build it. The water's gone. Scenes from the West's mega drought coming up in about 10 minutes.

1:24But first, American intelligence agencies look likely to lose a controversial tool for warrantless wiretaps. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, lets agencies like the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA spy on people abroad without a warrant. And while it's meant to target foreign terrorism suspects, it's also swept up the communications of American citizens. That part of FISA is set to expire Friday. Congressional debate over extending it has been hung up by President Trump's planned appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence. Some lawmakers are worried that Pulte will use the government's spy powers against Trump's political opponents.

2:09The House of Representatives went home Thursday afternoon without passing that extension. Asha Rangappa is a former FBI special agent, now at Yale, and she spoke with Indira Lakshmanot. House Speaker Mike Johnson this morning condemned Democrats for demanding that the president rescind his appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence as a condition for extending FISA surveillance of terrorism suspects. They are willing to jeopardize the safety and the security of the American people to make a cheap political point. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the president brought this problem on himself.

2:47In the middle of sensitive negotiations to reauthorize surveillance authority, Donald Trump decides to toss a hand grenade into the middle of those negotiations to blow them up because Donald Trump decided he wants to elevate Bill Pulte. Okay, so Asha, what's the reality? Are Americans in danger if warrantless wiretapping overseas expires, or is this fear-mongering?

3:18Asha Rangappa:So I think we need to separate two things. First, I think the Democrats are using the leverage they have to hold back the nomination of what is a patently unqualified person for this position. But the controversy over 702 has been around for years now. And I can just do a very quick crash course on 702 because it's kind of a complicated statute. Yeah, please do. Tell us who makes a request, how it's approved, and what kind of information you glean. So, you know, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was originally passed in 1978. And most people remember things like the Carter Page FISA and things like that.

3:59Asha Rangappa:Those are all under what's called Title I of FISA. These are when the government has to go into a FISA court for an individual person and show probable cause that they need to conduct electronic surveillance for national security purposes. What happened is that the original statute was designed for wire communications. And so in the post-911 era, in the cellular age, in the digital age, many purely foreign communications began to get routed through the United States, which would subject them to that individualized requirement. And so they adopted a new type of FISA program called 702. Unlike Title I, 702 is a program.

4:47Asha Rangappa:It's a series of procedures. And the attorney general and the DNI go to the Fisk Court and say, do you approve of these procedures? And once the court does that, they can conduct searches under those procedures. And those procedures are, they allow the government to perform electronic surveillance on non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located abroad who have foreign intelligence information. It prohibits targeting U.S. persons. What happens, though, is that the volume of the communications that they're collecting, so there's roughly 300 ,000 targets, they're collecting millions of communications, communications, emails, things like that.

5:34Asha Rangappa:They do collect what are known as incidental communications of U.S. persons. Right. Well, let me interrupt you for a second, Asha, because various DOJ inspector generals have pointed out abuses of FISA surveillance where Americans' private communications were swept up with investigations. And some lawmakers want to add warrants to the FISA process. So in your opinion, is that necessary or would it slow down the process as critics contend? I think it would slow down the process. What happens is these millions of communications like basically sit in this primordial vat. Okay, let's imagine. And different agencies are allowed to query that database for different purposes.

6:19Asha Rangappa:Those querying procedures is exactly what is being debated because those querying procedures allow you to look for information about U.S. persons, even though they might not have been the original target of the surveillance. But it is highly, you know, there's a lot of oversight over that. Those querying procedures have been refined. There's reporting. There's oversight. You know, I think reasonable people can disagree, but I personally don't think that there is a big risk of, you know, abuse based on the amount of accountability. Okay. Intelligence collection won't immediately stop as soon as this section expires on Friday night.

7:03But bottom line, are you worried about safety and monitoring terrorism?

7:08Asha Rangappa:Yes, I'm very. This is one of the most important tools we have, particularly in a time of war and major hostile adversarial threats. I think it's really, really an important tool that we need to have. Well, we'll see what happens when the House comes back and what the Senate does about it. That's former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa, senior lecturer at Yale. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.

7:36Well, after that conversation taped today, Trump said on social media he's nominating someone else for director of national intelligence. Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. But FISA may still be in jeopardy because the House has already left for recess. Coming up next, anti-immigrant riots have spread from Northern Ireland to Scotland and England. after a knife attack in Belfast allegedly committed by a Sudanese asylum seeker. Since video of the attack went viral, there have been riots, with masked men setting fires and going door-to-door in some immigrant neighborhoods.

8:16A local member of parliament called it a, quote, race-based pogrom. Indira has more in just a minute.

8:38Northern Ireland erupted in violence this week after a brutal knife attack in Belfast was captured on video and widely shared on social media. The alleged perpetrator, a 30-year-old refugee from Sudan, has been arrested and charged with attempted murder. Anti-immigrant mobs have taken to the streets, burning cars, injuring police officers and terrorizing migrant families. Many immigrants have been forced to flee their homes or businesses. Let's bring in Andrew McNair. He's a journalist with the Irish Times and he lives in Belfast. Welcome, Andrew. Hello there. Good evening. So we've seen news accounts of mobs in masks intimidating immigrants in Belfast and even burning some families out of their homes.

9:19Have you witnessed that firsthand? Yes, I was actually out on the streets of an area in the east of Belfast City, an area that is no stranger to violence whenever big political moments happen. What I saw as I got there was a bus was already on fire and you could hear tiny explosions inside the bus as the flames sort of licked around. Moments after I arrived, there must have been hundreds of people there, I would say upwards of 300 people on the street. fire engines arrived and as they did, one or two people with their faces covered snatched one of the hoses off the firefighters and dragged it over a burning tire and started to burn the hose there was only a couple of people that did that but what struck me was that that was meant by cheers from the crowd and then they were allowed to crack on and get on with tackling that fire.

10:23To the left of me at that moment, I heard a man shouting, get away from that bin. He had just thrown a flare into the bin and sure enough, moments later that went up in flames as well. What struck me from that night was that there were small groups of relatively young men with their faces covered who were perpetrating some of this violence, setting fire to this bus, throwing projectiles at it. The majority of the crowd were actually spectators, some of them with their faces covered, but there were also people who had just come out of their homes wearing their pyjamas and just sort of seeing what was going on.

11:06Moments later, there was some commotion on one of the side streets, and that was the moment at which people started to attack residential homes. And right in front of me, a small group of masked men started to pelt stones at the windows of one particular house and started to break the windows of a silver BMW that was sitting outside. They were stomping on the roof. And then one man started to try and break down the door. I tried to ascertain. I was trying to keep a low profile and not tell people that I was a journalist. But I was trying to ascertain who was living inside that home. And they couldn't tell me.

11:42They eventually set that car alight. And later down the line in that evening, in another street, two houses were burnt. One of them, I understand, was from a burning car where the flames actually licked over. And that man, who wasn't a refugee, was from East Belfast. His entire home was destroyed. Wow. So that's what I saw on Tuesday night. OK, well, let's listen to Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn on Sky News earlier today. It's really important to convey the sense of fear that has been created above all for those who were intimidated, burned out of their houses by masked thugs on the basis of the color of their skin.

12:29Well, Belfast and Northern Ireland in general is, of course, famously known for decades and decades of violence between Catholics and Protestants, not for, you know, that between white people and immigrants. But tell me, how are police officers who've been trained in anti-terrorist activity trying to quell the violence and protect immigrant communities? Well, on Tuesday night in particular, there wasn't a great deal of police presence around the areas of violence. What they were doing was actually sort of guarding the perimeter and turning traffic away. Last night, there was a water cannon deployed on the streets, which is an important point because water cannon is actually banned in other parts of the UK.

13:13But in Northern Ireland, they're allowed. And they were trying to actually protect a hotel which is being used to house asylum seekers in an area just outside North Belfast. The police have said again today, the Assistant Chief Constable, Ryan Henderson, has reaffirmed that more water cannon have been deployed onto the streets of Northern Ireland. They're also deploying more officers and dogs in the anticipation of further violence. Okay, Andrew, we only have a little time left, so I'm going to interrupt you and ask about far-right and anti-immigration groups who've used social media to coordinate and even encourage violence beyond Belfast, across Northern Ireland, into Scotland.

13:55It's overlapping with pre-existing tensions. Tell us, could this help Nigel Farage, the far right UK politician who's aiming for the prime minister's office? We've only got 30 seconds left. I don't know if it's going to help Nigel Farage. What I would say is that some politicians appear to have been using this as a sort of a way to agitate people and amplify their message because division really does help some politicians. so it's part of Nigel Farage's narrative. Okay, thank you Andrew McNair with the Irish Times and stay safe in Belfast.

14:40Lake Powell is running out of water. It's the country's second largest reservoir by capacity but thanks to a decades-long drought in the West It's currently less than a quarter full. If levels keep dropping, its dam won't be able to generate electricity anymore. As part of a plan to keep the system from crashing, Peter O'Dowd reports the government is pulling in water from anywhere it can. The Bureau of Reclamation is sending water from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming downstream to Powell. But shoring up one troubled reservoir on the Colorado River comes at a cost to another. My God, I mean, it's ridiculous.

15:21Tony Valdez owns the Buckboard Marina in Wyoming, where the water is receding. It was just like, boom, seven feet. I mean, it was dropping a foot a day. I couldn't keep up with nothing. The Flaming Gorge is known for its kokanee salmon and trophy lake trout. People come from all over for the marina's chartered fishing tours. After a day on the lake, they dock their boats, grab a beer and a burger. But when the water started dropping... We had a third of our freaking customers cancel. They call us up and they say, oh, the water's gone. The water's gone. We're not going to build it. The water's gone.

15:51To be clear, the water is not gone. But the ramp to the dock has dropped at a sharp angle toward the receding water. And the situation is going to get worse. The Bureau of Reclamation says water levels at the Flaming Gorge will fall a total of 35 feet by next April. Valdez is building new walkways, even considering moving the entire operation, the restaurant and the tackle shop, closer to the water. None of this will solve the bigger problem. There's not enough water in the Colorado River and its tributaries to meet the unrelenting demand. You could drain all the lakes and never achieve them. You will never feed the thirst.

16:26You can't. Even with borrowed water from the Flaming Gorge, the reprieve for Lake Powell is temporary. A long, hot summer lies ahead. And in the weeks to come, the federal government is expected to release a plan that will likely mean deep cuts to the water supply for states that rely on the Colorado River. Peter O'Dowd will be following that plan expected soon from the federal government. So click that follow button and keep up with Here and Now anytime. You can find more of Peter's reporting on the Colorado River and the larger water crisis in the West at hereandnow.org. That's it for the show today.

17:04Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Lynn Menningon and Will Walkie. Our editors were Todd Munt, Michaela Rodriguez, and Michael Scotto. technical direction from Matt Reed and Marcel Damiano. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And here and now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.

17:43Thank you.