Kenneth Bass, the Justice Department official who helped write the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government with the approval of a special court to spy on foreigners suspected of espionage in the United States, died of cancer April 27 at his home in Great Falls, Va. He was 65.
Bass, an appellate lawyer with Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein and Fox since 2002 and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s law school, was a frequent commentator on national security issues throughout his career. He also was appointed by then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., to a 1987 advisory panel that looked into Judge Robert Bork’s background when Bork was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.
His work on FISA, which President Jimmy Carter signed in 1978, came in response to extensive investigations by Senate committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities by the FBI and CIA, some of them stemming from the complex of crimes that became known as the Watergate scandal. He was the first person to be chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which was created by then-Attorney General Griffin Bell.
He remained skeptical of domestic spying by the government. In one of his many interviews, he told the New York Times in 2006 “the concept of the (National Security Agency) having near-real-time access to information about every call made in the country is chilling.”
A native of Richmond, Va., Bass graduated from Duke University. Survivors include his wife of 43 years, Shirley Bass of Great Falls; two sons, Timothy Bass of Bethesda, Md., and Christopher Bass of Herndon, Va.; a sister; and four grandchildren.
Washington Post
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