But that law is set to expire early next year, and the administration has launched a lobbying campaign to make it permanent—and add new features, such as a measure providing retroactive immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that participated in the surveillance program. (The companies have been accused of sharing private customer information with the government without a valid court order.) But the administration's campaign has been set back by charges that U.S. intelligence officials have made contradictory and in some cases false claims about the spying program. Most notably, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was forced to retract recent public testimony that the law helped lead to the arrest of Islamic militants who were plotting an attack on U.S. military facilities in Germany.

Harman has been among the most outspoken in accusing McConnell and others of politicizing the debate over the bill, and she is now citing the Capitol Hill terror threat as a prime example. But GOP Sen. Kit Bond said that the discredited report was never a factor during Senate deliberations over the bill: "This is more of House Democrats, with their friends in the media, trying to demonize the Protect America Act." He said the bill is "too important to be politicized. This is a bogus, irresponsible attempt to attack the administration."

The incident dates back to Aug. 2, when the Senate took up floor debate on the politically charged surveillance bill. President Bush had insisted that Congress enact the measure before it left for its summer recess, asserting in a national radio address a few days earlier that it was needed because "the terrorist network that struck America on September the 11th wants to strike our country again." That same day, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported yet another reason for concern: Capitol police had stepped up security procedures after receiving a warning about an intelligence report that Al Qaeda might be planning to attack the Capitol grounds some time before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Without mentioning a specific threat, GOP Sen. Trent Lott told reporters that same day that Congress needed to pass changes to terrorist-surveillance laws before leaving for the August recess. Otherwise, he warned, "the disaster could be on our doorstep." Asked if people should leave Washington, D.C., during the month of August, Lott responded, "I think it would be good to leave town in August, and it would probably be good to stay out until September the 12th." A spokesman for Lott said today that, the senator was actually only joking (although the Roll Call story gave no indication of that.) "Senator Lott's remarks were made tongue-in-cheek, which everyone who heard them interpreted as such, and bear in mind he said this only a few days after he urged that the Senate follow the Iraqi parliament's lead and go home due to our lack of legislative progress," the spokesman said in an statement e-mailed to NEWSWEEK. "He offered them as a reflection of his total frustration that since nothing was being accomplished, everyone might as well go home."

But other GOP members appear to have taken the matter more seriously. Harman told NEWSWEEK she was approached on the House floor that day by an anxious Republican colleague. The Republican congressman (whom she declined to name publicly) had heard about the Capitol Hill threat report from his colleagues and was concerned because Speaker Nancy Pelosi hadn't briefed the full House about it.  "Doesn't the Speaker have an obligation to inform members when this facility could be under attack?" Harman said her GOP colleague asked her.

A spokesman for Pelosi told NEWSWEEK today that the Speaker receives regular weekly briefing from U.S. intelligence officials, But the prospect of an imminent threat on the Capitol wasn't even mentioned in her weekly briefing that week. Instead, spokesman Brendan Daly said, the Speaker's staff learned of the intel report from the sergeant at arm's office, which said the information it had received from intelligence officials was "very vague."