Tennessee Attorney General Declines Invitation to Pressure Democrat Congress to Vital National Security Legislation

NASHVILLE, TN - The Tennessee Republican Party today urges Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper Jr. to add his name to a bipartisan letter signed by more than two dozen state attorneys general urging the U.S. House of Representatives bring the vital national security legislation known as FISA to the floor of the House for a vote.

The FISA legislation, which involves surveillance tools to monitor calls to and from known terrorists, is necessary to ensure that intelligence officials have the ability to collect vitally important information about foreign terrorists operating overseas. The Democrat-controlled Congress has allowed a previous similar law to lapse, demonstrating its weak stance on national security.

The House Republican Conference (www.house.gov) released a statement March 4 detailing the bi-partisan appeal made by state attorneys’ general from across the country urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives pass the FISA bill that has already been passed on a bipartisan basis by the U.S. Senate three weeks ago, before the House took a vacation break.

The letter was signed by 16 Republican and 9 Democrat state attorneys general.

According to a letter sent by Tennessee Attorney General Cooper to an interested citizen and subsequently published on the Internet, Cooper, a Democrat, declined to add his name to the letter because the FISA issue does not “directly impact the operation of Tennessee state government or Tennessee’s laws.”

Cooper went on to tout that he had recently added his name to a letter signed by every state Attorney General calling for Congress to restore funding to a federal grants program for state law enforcement activities.

“If Attorney General Cooper is saying the threat of terrorism does not “directly impact” Tennessee and its government and laws, we could not disagree more,” said Bill Hobbs, communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party. “The FISA legislation is designed to assist law enforcement in discovering and stopping terrorist attacks against the U.S. before they occur, both abroad and here in the United States, of which Tennessee is a part.

“We find it appalling that Mr. Cooper thinks it’s a good thing to sign a letter to protect Tennessee’s access to federal dollars, but a bad thing to sign a letter urging Congress to pass legislation necessary to protect the people from terrorist attack,” Hobbs said.

“Tennessee’s two Senators voted for the FISA legislation, and most of the members of the U.S. House would vote for it as well, if Speaker Pelosi and a small group of House Democrats were not blocking the legislation for purely partisan purposes,” Hobbs said. “Protecting the people of Tennessee and America are too important for pork and partisanship to play any role.”

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The text of the AG’s letter to Speaker Pelosi is published online at this link: http://tenncva.com/2008/03/10/tns-ag-on-fisa-please-connect-the-dots

The text of Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper’s letter explaining his refusal to join the bipartisan group of attorneys general in that letter follows…

Thank you for your questions. Attorneys General often circulate letters seeking support from their colleagues in other states on various issues. As a matter of long-standing policy, my office limits its involvement with such requests to letters on issues that directly impact the operation of Tennessee state government or Tennessee’s laws. For example, I recently joined a letter signed by every Attorney General calling for Congress to restore funding that had been cut from the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grants program, which funds a variety of important law enforcement activities in Tennessee and other states. By limiting Tennessee’s participation in this manner, we feel that we maximize the impact of Tennessee’s intervention.The renewal of FISA and the conditions under which that renewal would occur are federal issues of great importance on which Tennessee’s congressional delegation is fully engaged. They are not issues, however, that meet the policy outlined above. Accordingly, I did not join the letter supporting the Senate version of the FISA Amendments Act of 2007, and I would not join a letter supporting the House version.

I hope that this information is helpful.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr.
Attorney General and Reporter
State of Tennessee

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