Public debate, deadly?

We've heard probably a dozen times in the last several days that a public debate about FISA will cost American lives. It's a pretty tortured claim, but I think it should be explained. Because, to begin with, we've been debating FISA for months now. In fact, not a week has gone by since the end of August recess that the Congress hasn't held a hearing about surveillance of some kind. I can quite easily point readers to pages and pages of expert opinion, hours of footage of testimony, dozens of news clippings, op-eds, and any number of other public documents that contain portions of this supposedly lethal debate. A lot of those documents contain the words of Mike McConnell, who's one of the people insisting that this sort of activity is deadly.

Why the double standard? He ought to be asked what precise chain of events connects the testimony he's given and the op-eds he's published with the deaths of Americans. Surely, if he's allowed to contend on a whim that FISA saved lives in Germany, he can say at what point exactly the debate about FISA has cost lives. And if he believes what he's saying, he should be asked why he's accepted Congress's invitations to testify publicly and volunteered op-eds to the Washington Post and so on and so on.

After all, if it's such a huge risk, why not trump up an executive privilege claim or insist on classified hearings and refuse to comment publicly on the matter? (Don't answer)