Holy Cross Senior Receives Prize for Work During Semester in Washington, D.C.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Holy Cross senior Patrick Reilly has been selected by the College’s Center for Interdisciplinary and Special Studies as the 2008 fall semester’s Maurizio Vannicelli Washington Semester Away program award. He will present his thesis, “Wiretapping and the Wartime Presidency: An Examination of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the George W. Bush Administration,” on November 11 at 4 p.m. in the Rehm Library, located in Smith Hall at the College of the Holy Cross.

While in Washington, D.C., Reilly interned at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, on the staff of the chairman of the Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. He worked with the Judiciary Committee’s law librarian to help update the Committee’s Web site.  He was also responsible for carrying out a number of other tasks, including writing reports that later appeared on the Web site, working with law clerks to research the President’s judicial nominees and political appointees to the Department of Justice, and working with the hearing clerk to prepare for hearings and markups.

Reilly’s talk will focus on the wiretapping program know as the Terrorist Surveillance Program that the George W. Bush administration established in the aftermath of 9/11.

The controversy of this program was the Bush administration’s decision to avoid a statute known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), created in 1978 in the wake of Watergate and the widespread abuse of wiretapping. Bush’s administration argued that FISA was exceptionally burdensome and that outdated procedures would inhibit the government’s access to terrorist communications.

“I hope to discuss both sides of this argument and suggest what I believe to be the most reasonable solution to this debate. Accordingly, I concluded that while FISA was indeed exceedingly cumbersome and outdated when the administration decided to circumvent it, it would have been in the best interest in the Bush administration to work with the Congress to update the statute to make it more amenable to the current conflict,” said Reilly.

Reilly, from Coventry, Conn., is a political science major. He’s been involved in Student Programs for Urban Development (SPUD) all four years at the People in Peril (PIP) shelter on Main St. in Worcester. He helps to serve hot meals to the homeless on Friday nights. After graduation, Reilly is considering a number of options including the military and commercial fishing.

The Vannicelli Prize is awarded each semester in honor of the late Holy Cross political science professor and Washington Semester director, Maurizio Vannicelli, for best research paper produced in the Washington Semester Away program. The recipient of the prize is accorded the opportunity to give a public lecture at the College on his or her thesis. In addition, the recipient receives a bound copy of the thesis and is presented the book award during commencement exercises.