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Congressional Oversight of Intelligence in the United States
Among the most difficult challenges facing Congress is supervision of America’s secret
foreign policy, as carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the fourteen other
veiled agencies that comprise the so-called intelligence community. Drawing upon interviews
and archival research, this analysis evaluates the record of intelligence accountability (review or
“oversight”) and examines major obstacles that limit its effectiveness. Of special interest in the
analysis is the extent to which lawmakers have concentrated on the routine inspection of
intelligence operations as a means of deterring mistakes and improprieties (“police-patrolling”)
or, instead, undertaken their oversight duties chiefly in the role of investigators after major
intelligence failures and scandals have come to light in the public domain (“firefighting”).
THE MEANING OF OVERSIGHT
“If men were angels,” wrote James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 51, “no government
would be necessary.” In the absence of angels, he advised that “ambition must be made to
counteract ambition.” The most important safeguard against the abuse of power in a democratic
society would be elections: supervision by the people. But Madison stressed, too, the value of
establishing “auxiliary precautions” within the government. This phrase has come to encompass
an array of checks-and-balances, such as Congressional hearings and budget reviews.
None of the major intelligence abuses that came to light during the 1960s and 1970s
were uncovered by institutions of accountability inside the executive branch, but rather by media
and Congressional investigators. Newspaper and television correspondents face high walls,
however, in their efforts to track intelligence activities. With their subpoena powers and other
Convention