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constitutionally based investigative tools, lawmakers are in a better position to watch America’s
secret agencies. Congress has the significant added advantage of control over the pursue strings.
Given the preeminence of the legislative branch as an institution of oversight, this study focuses
on its role in intelligence accountability.
Former House member Lee H. Hamilton (2002:56), D-Indiana, offers this case for
legislative oversight: “ . . . Congress must do more than write the laws; it must make sure that the
administration is carrying out those laws the way Congress intended.” Through oversight, he
continues, lawmakers “can help protect the country from the imperial presidency and from
bureaucratic arrogance . . . . [and] help keep federal bureaucracies on their toes.” Former U.S.
Senator Wyche Fowler (2003), D-Georgia, puts it simply: “oversight keeps bureaucrats from
doing something stupid.” More formally, Aberbach (1990:2) defines legislative oversight as
“review of the actions of federal departments, agencies, and commissions, and of the programs
and policies they administer, including review that takes place during program and policy
implementation as well as afterward.” He sees these activities as “a significant facet of
congressional efforts to control administration and policy.”
THE FIRE ALARM THEORY OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT
A broad theory of oversight dominates the scholarly literature and posits two models of
behavior: police-patrolling and firefighting—what one might think of less metaphorically as
routine inspections by overseers in contrast to their engagement in intensive investigations of
failures and wrongdoing. McCubbins and Schwartz (1984:166) offer this explanation of police-
patrolling: “At its own initiative, Congress examines a sample of executive agency activities,
with the aim of detecting and remedying any violations of legislative goals and, by its
Convention