CIA director nominee Ratcliffe: FISA is 'indispensable,' but must have safeguards

John Ratcliffe, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for CIA director, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 "is an indispensable national security tool," but that safeguards must be maintained to protected American civil liberties.

Ratcliffe appeared before the panel for his confirmation hearing, where he faced questions on FISA Section 702.

The section permits the warrantless surveillance of foreigners abroad and has drawn scrutiny over the potential to sweep up information on Americans in the process.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., asked Ratcliffe, Trump's former Director of National Intelligence, on Wednesday about his view of Section 702.

"FISA, and particularly Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is an indispensable national security tool. There's no other way to get around that," Ratcliffe said. "I say that, not as a matter of opinion, but as an informed judgment in my role as the Director of National Intelligence, being the president's principal intelligence adviser, advising the president in the Oval Office, and understanding that a significant percentage -- sometimes more than half of the actionable, foreign intelligence that we provide to the president as the policymaker to act as commander-in-chief comes from FISA-derived, or 702-derived, action.

"I will say, I have supported FISA in that regard, but I've also, as I outlined earlier, understand that it's an important, indispensable tool, but one that can be abused, and that we must do everything we can to make sure that it has the appropriate safeguards because it can't come at the sacrifice of Americans' civil liberties," he continued. "So I have supported those reforms and called out those abuses when they have taken place."

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., later asked Ratcliffe to explain how FISA works regarding U.S. citizens.

"When, for instance, the CIA collects intelligence, it is allowable to do a U.S. person query, where you're looking for someone that might be communicating with some foreign person to do something bad to the United States," Ratcliffe said. "What you can't have is accessing that or making a query for political reasons or for some reason other than protecting our national security. And so, we have to have the safeguards to make sure that those kinds of abuses can't take place and be misused. And my pledge to you is, if confirmed as CIA director, that that won't happen."

He added that he is "impressed with the CIA's compliance rate with regard to U.S. person queries is 99.6%, meaning they do a really good job to make sure Americans swept up incidentally aren't having their civil liberties violated. Is it perfect? No."

Rounds noted that reforms have been made to FISA and asked if Ratcliffe would be supportive of renewing FISA Section 702.

Regarding the renewal, Ratcliffe said, "It's critical, it's indispensable, and for critics of it, no one has offered a replacement."