By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

Republican staff boycotted Thursday’s meetings between House and Senate aides seeking to hammer out a final version of legislation to overhaul the nation’s electronic surveillance law.

Two Democratic aides said Republicans were invited to an afternoon meeting to hash out a compromise between House and Senate versions of the legislation (HR 3773) to revamp the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But none showed up.

Democratic staffers for the House and Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees met anyway, as they had earlier this week, and planned to meet again Friday.

Republican staffers are not participating, because their bosses have objected to holding the negotiations at all. Instead, Republicans want the House to accept the FISA bill passed by the Senate, without change. That measure, passed by a bipartisan 68-29 vote, was drafted with input from the administration and has the support of the White House.

Senate Republicans objected to the appointment of conferees Feb. 14, seeking to force the House to accept the Senate bill. But House Democrats refused, and launched informal negotiations over a final measure.

“The meeting today was a silly sham to draw attention away from the fact that House Democratic leaders seem more interested in protecting the profits of their trial lawyer campaign contributors than they are in protecting the American people,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio.

“There is no need for further negotiations. The only question is when the House Democratic leadership will bring the bipartisan FISA bill to the floor for a vote.”

The Democratic chairmen of the four committees assailed the GOP stance in a statement.

“In what should have been a bipartisan, bicameral meeting, staff members of the House and Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees met today to work in good faith to reach a compromise on FISA reform,” they said. “Unfortunately, we understand our Republican counterparts instructed their staffs not to attend this working meeting, therefore not allowing progress to be made in a bipartisan, bicameral way.”

The four chairmen said they and their staff would “continue to work and hope Republicans will join us to put our nation’s security first.”

Immunity Dispute

A key difference between the two chambers is over retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications companies being sued for their alleged assistance with the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program. The Senate-passed FISA bill would grant the retroactive immunity, while the House bill would not.

The administration has vowed to veto any legislation that does not provide immunity, and President Bush made clear that he sees no room for compromise on that score.

“How do you compromise on something like granting liability for a telecommunications company?” Bush said aboard Air Force One as he flew home from Africa Thursday afternoon. “You can’t. If we do not give liability protection to those who are helping us, they won’t help us. And if they don’t help us, there will be no program. And if there’s no program, America is more vulnerable.”

Earlier, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. , D-Mich., wrote the White House this week to express his appreciation for its decision to allow all members of Conyers’ committee to review legal documents related to the warrantless surveillance program and to renew his request for other documents from numerous previous committee inquiries.

Only some members of the House Judiciary Committee had previously been granted access to legal documents related to the warrantless surveillance program. Democrats had asserted they needed to review those documents to decide whether to grant immunity. Now all members of the Intelligence and Judiciary committees in both chambers have been granted access to the documents.

The Judiciary chairmen in both chambers have expressed the most opposition to retroactive immunity. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV , D-W. Va. has been an active proponent, while House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes , D-Texas, said last week that he was still reviewing the documents.

Kathleen Hunter contributed to this article.

First posted Feb. 21, 2008 2:08 p.m.