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produced the degree of partisan attacks the nation began to witness in 1992; in fact, Democratic
overseers from 1975-1991 had been especially tough in their questioning of CIA witnesses in
hearings during the Carter years and less so during the Reagan years (Johnson, 1994a).
Knott (2000:57) attributes the new polarization, in part, to a Republican wariness of
President Bill Clinton’s foreign policy initiatives, as well as to a “simple partisan payback for
years of perceived Democratic hectoring of Republican presidents.” The Gates nomination for
DCI in 1991 (his second try) was an important turning point, as the GOP rallied behind President
George H.W. Bush’s choice “as a matter of political loyalty and obligation” (Ott, 2003:82-83).
Democrat Boren joined the Republicans in a strong endorsement of Gates and the nominee
eventually succeeded; but the hearings and the final vote took place in a whirlwind of partisan
politics. Another DCI confirmation hearing in 1997, this time to consider the candidacy of the
incumbent Democratic national security adviser, Anthony Lake, led to another bitter partisan
struggle, with Lake finally withdrawing his name from consideration as intelligence director.
The “vitriolic” hearings (Ott, 2003: 87) were punctuated by the most heated public exchanges
among members in SSCI’s history.
Another dimension of oversight behavior emerged during this period. With an occasional
exception, most members of SSCI and HPSCI became more outright advocates than objective
reviewers of intelligence programs. Even SSCI’s Democratic chairman, Bob Graham (Graham,
2002), D-Florida, conceded: “ . . . . we probably didn’t shake the [intelligence] agencies hard
enough after the end of the Berlin Wall to say: ‘Hey, look, the world is changing and you need to
change the ways in which you operate . . . . new strategies, new personnel, new culture.’ We
should have been more demanding of these intelligence agencies.”
Convention