MATERIAL FOR DDCI CONFIRMATION HEARINGS: CIA AND CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT
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CIA-RDP88G01116R001001760004-3
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RIPPUB
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K
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9
Document Creation Date:
December 22, 2016
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June 23, 2011
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4
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Publication Date:
March 17, 1986
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MEMO
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ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET
SUBJECT: (Optional) Material for DDCI Confirmation Hearings:
"CIA and Congressional Oversight"
8G
1108
FROM: J. Kenneth McDonald
Chief, History Staff
EXTENSION
NO.
316 Ames Bldg.
DATE
17 March 1986
TO: (Officer designation, room number, and
building)
DATE
OFFICER'S
COMMENTS (Number each comment to show from whom
RECEIVED
FORWARDED
INITIALS
to whom. Draw a line across column after each comment.)
1.
Executive Secretary
2.
STAT
3.
STAT
4.
5.
STAT
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
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14.
15.
DCI
(EXEC
j
gee
FORM 610 USE PREVIOUS
I-79 EDITIONS
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17 March 1986
MEMORANDUM FOR: STAT
Executive Secretary
FROM: J. Kenneth McDonald
Chief, History Staff
SUBJECT: Material for DDCI Confirmation Hearings: "CIA and
Congressional Oversight"
You may be interested in the attached paper, "CIA and Congessional
Oversight,' that I put together at David Gries's request for Bob Gates to
use in preparing for his DDCI confirmation hearings. The paper is mainly
based on material from Bob Hathaway's prospectus for a monographic history
of the Agency's relations with Congress, and from the short history of CIA
that Anne Karalekas produced for the Church Committee.
STAT
J. Kenneth McDonald
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Congress played a central role in creating CIA. The National Security
Act of 1947 transformed the inadequate Central Intelligence Group into a
Central Intelligence Agency, responsible to the President through the
National Security Council (NSC). The new Agency's principal purposes were
to coordinate the intelligence activities of the United States government,
and to advise the NSC in matters relating to intelligence and national
security.
Two years after the National Security Act Congress passed the equally
important Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, whose provisions exempted
CIA from any federal law that required disclosure of the organization,
functions, names, titles, salaries or numbers of its employees. The Act
also authorized the Agency to bury its annual appropriations within the
budgets of other departments, to transfer funds from other government
agencies, and to be exempt from a number of statutory provisions respecting
the expenditure and accounting of public monies.
Considering how controversial many of these provisions became some
twenty-five years later, Congress's procedures in passing the CIA Act of
1949 were striking. Both House and Senate Armed Services committees held
hearings in executive session and released only fragmentary reports. Noting
that much of the testimony was too sensitive to share with their colleagues,
they asked Congress to vote on faith to give a new agency unprecedented and
largely unsupervised peacetime powers. With the passage of this act in 1949
CIA's basic legislative framework was complete.
The Cold War Years
For the next twenty or so years, most Americans--including most
congressmen--had little idea of what the Agency was actually supposed to do,
and most also assumed that it would endanger national security to insist on
having details of this element in America s Cold War defense. Legislative
oversight of the CIA, when it occurred at all, was informal and nominal.
Congress, like the rest of the nation, held a set of Cold War assumptions
that did not question the need for an active and relatively autonomous
central intelligence organization. Impressive CIA triumphs in Iran in 1953
and Guatemala a year later helped insure that there was little inclination
to monitor the Agency's operations. At appropriations time, the principal
concern on Capitol Hill was to see that the Agency got the money it needed.
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When Congress enacted the 1946 Legislative Reorganization Act it did not
anticipate dealing with a central intelligence organization. After the
passage of the 1947 National Security Act CIA had to be accommodated within
the existing committee system, so that the Armed Services and Appropriations
Committees were granted jurisdiction. Until formal CIA subcommittees were
organized in 1956 the only mechanism for congressional oversight consisted
of small ad hoc groups of senior congressmen who received annual briefings
on CIA activities, reviewed its budget, and appropriated funds. Mutual
congratulations and expressions of good-will characterized these annual
briefings, and there was no interest on either side in arranging a structure
for Congress to take on genuine responsibility for supervising CIA. Indeed,
critics have suggested that the system that evolved in this period not only
failed to provide legislative control over the intelligence agency, but
actually served to shield CIA from effective congressional scrutiny.
Even after the Appropriations and Armed Services committees of each
house established formal CIA subcommittees in 1956 the relationship between
Congress and CIA remained one of cameraderie and understanding. Because
committee chairmen usually kept their positions for a long time--Richard
Russell chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1955 Ito 1968--they
often developed relationships of trust and understanding with DCIs. DCIs
informed senior committee members of large-scale covert action projects at
about the time they were implemented, but as a courtesy and not as part of a
formal review or approval process.
Most legislators saw little need to pry into CIA operations, convinced
as they were that the Agency was performing admirably in the continuing
struggle against the Soviet Union and expansionist world communism. DCI
Bedell Smith and his successors, most notably Allen Dulles and Richard
Helms, realized the importance of staunch congressional allies, and each was
careful to brief the appropriate members on potentially sensitive matters.
Moreover, CIA provided important services for Congress itself. In the
mid-1950s, for example, by successfully challenging the Air Force's alarmist
assessments of Soviet long-range bomber capabilities, CIA's Office of
National Estimates dissuaded Congress from allocating huge sums for
unnecessary countermeasures.
CIA relations with congressmen centered in the Office of General Counsel
until 1961, when a separate Office of Legislative Counsel was established.
For most of the Agency's first two decades liaison with Congess was the
special province first of Walter Pforzheimer and then of John Warner. CIA
repeatedly benefited from the continuity that Pforzheimer and Warner
represented, for they had time to cultivate close ties with such influential
congressional figures as Richard Russell, Carl Hayden and Carl Vinson. OGC
and OLC staff members coordinated all Agency contacts with congressmen and
senators, planned briefings, and arranged for key legislators to visit
Agency facilities. They responded to congressional inquiries and
occasionally even prepared committee reports and speeches for individual
congressmen.
Congress demonstrated its deference to CIA's special requirements during
the annual appropriation process. The Director usually appeared before the
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special CIA subcommittees of the two appropriations committees with budget
requests for the coming year broken down into general functional
categories. After cursory examination and a few unfocused questions about
Agency activities, the subcommittees invariably endorsed the DCI's figures,
which were then carefully concealed in the budgets of other departments.
Neither public disclosure nor floor debate of these requests was permitted,
even though such secrecy made it impossible to determine whether Agency
expenditures were in compliance with the law. Even congressmen on the CIA
subcommittees were not always allowed access to these figures by their
chairmen. These restrictions precluded any comparison of CIA spending with
that of other agencies, or any analysis of CIA's internal ordering of
priorities. On the other hand, this tight-lipped approach satisfied the
Agency's security needs and its preference for minimal outside interference
in its work. That the congressional leadership acceded to--indeed,
promoted--these procedures year after year testifies to congress's high
regard for the Agency as well as to the close relationship between CIA's top
management and senior legislators on the Hill.
The high esteem that most congressmen had for CIA also served to protect
it from the worst ravages of McCarthyism. Of all the agencieJ within the
federal government that the Wisconsin senator attacked, CIA was virtually
alone in successfully resisting his assaults. Allen Dulles openly defied
Joe McCarthy's slurs, had Senate subpoenas quashed, and mobilized
congressional supporters, ultimately forcing McCarthy to back down from his
attack on CIA. Dulles's integrity and courage won him and the Agency still
greater respect from the large number of senators who were distressed by
McCarthy's reckless accusations.
During Allen Dulles's tenure as DCI Senators Mike Mansfield and Eugene
McCarthy made serious but unsuccessful attempts to strengthen Congress s
oversight role, and to broaden members' participation in carrying out the
committees' responsibilities. The attempts failed principally because of
the strength of the committee system in Congress, assisted by adroit
Executive branch moves to deflate the impetus for change. Senator Mike
Mansfield introduced his Resolution for a Joint Oversight Committee in
1955. This resolution was the result of a survey of the Executive branch by
the Hoover Commission, which Congress had established in 1954. The Hoover
Commission had a small task force under General Mark Clark investigate the
intelligence community, except for CIA's clandestine service, which was
surveyed by a separate body appointed by President Eisenhower and chaired by
General James Doolittle. The Clark Task Force recommended the formation of
an oversight group, a mixed permanent body to include members of Congress
and distinguished private citizens. Rejecting the specific Task Force
proposal, the full Hoover Commission recommended two bodies, a joint
congressional oversight committee and a private citizens' group.
The Commission's recommendation led Senator Mansfield to introduce his
resolution, which was immediately and fiercely opposed by the senior members
of the committees that then had jurisdiction over CIA. Moreover, at the
request of the NSC Allen Dulles produced a long memorandum analyzing the
problems that a joint oversight committee would create. Without expressly
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objecting to such a committee Dulles described enough difficulties
effectively to recommend against its establishment. He expressed concern
about the possible security breaches from committee staff members, and noted
that foreign intelligence services' objections to this kind of information
sharing might endanger the Agency's liaison arrangements. Although Dulles
convinced senior Administration officials that such a committee was
undesirable, it was the senior committee members' opposition that decisively
defeated the bill in April 1956.
While the unsuccessful Mansfield Resolution did bring the Armed Services
and Appropriations Committees to establish formal CIA subcommittees, these
did little to change the informal and minimal nature of congressional
oversight. In these subcommittees the same small group of senior members
continued to be responsible for matters related to CIA, and as before their
work depended mainly upon these members' personal relationships with senior
Agency officers rather than upon any kind of regular proceedings or formal
review. In 1961, after the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation, Senator
Eugene McCarthy attempted to revive the idea of a formally designated CIA
oversight committee, but his effort also failed.
I
By the mid-1960s international developments brought more demands from
Congress for intelligence information. The Six Day War in 1967, advances in
space technology, and nuclear proliferation all heightened congressional
interest in the intelligence product. Responding to congressional requests,
Richard Helms as DCI increased the number of briefings to committees,
subcommittees and individual members. In 1967 thirteen congressional
committees, in addition to the four with oversight functions, received
substantive intelligence briefings. Yet all this did not change the closed,
informal nature of congressional oversight. Both John McCone and Richard
Helms maintained good relationships with senior-ranking committee members,
who were kept informed on an individual basis of important Agency
activities. The committees continued to provide only a cursory review of
CIA's activities. When Senator Eugene McCarthy again introduced a bill to
establish a CIA oversight committee in 1966, he failed as he had before in
1961, and as Senator Mansfield had failed in his 1956 attempt.
For almost a quarter of a century the CIA thus enjoyed a tolerance and
freedom of action that stemmed from congressional confidence in the Agency's
leadership and product, and from the basic foreign policy consensus that
prevailed during those Cold War years. Longtime CIA officials would later
look back upon this period as a golden era, and in a sense it was. Secure
in the public's confidence, exempt from standard disclosure and accounting
regulations, the Central Intelligence Agency remained remarkably free from
the checks that the legislative branch ordinarily places on operations of
the executive.
Deteriorating Relations, 1967-1972
Yet this independence was not without a price. Since this wide latitude
for action was highly convenient, few Agency officials recognized that it
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also harbored the potential for serious trouble. Possessing power
sufficient to achieve great purposes, CIA also had the capacity to damage
American interests and prestige. In light of the traditional strong
American suspicion of power exercised in secret, CIA could hardly expect
permanent legislative complacency. Ramparts magazine's 1967 revelations of
CIA's secret funding of the National u ent Association and of other
apparently independent organizations disconcerted and disillusioned many who
had never previously questioned CIA's Cold War role. When serious criticism
of the Agency began in the late 1960s there were few congressmen who knew
enough about its work to defend it, or to refute false accusations. When
some members of the House Armed Services Committee pleaded ignorance of the
existence of a CIA subcommittee, confidence in congressional oversight was
bound to erode. By circumventing the customary system of legislative checks
on executive agencies, CIA had made itself vulnerable to criticism without
arming its defenders with enough information to answer the critics.
Moreover, a new mood of skepticism and assertiveness pervaded Congress
by the second half of the 1960s. These years witnessed the collapse of the
consensus that had underwritten America's Cold War polices for two decades.
A partial if halting rapprochement with the Soviet Union, incontrovertible
evidence of a real split in the global communist movement, and growing
domestic opposition to the war in Vietnam all coalesced to challenge the
assumptions that had dominated foreign policy debates since the end of World
War II. As an important instrument of the orthodoxy now being questioned,
CIA attracted new interest and new critics.
Institutional issues also intruded to undermine the Agency's privileged
position. Until the late 1960s a small group of committee chairmen ruled
Congress with virtually unchallengeable authority. Often holding safe seats
in the one-party South, men such as Representatives Vinson, Cannon and
Rivers, and Senators Russell and Hayden, accumulated seniority and acquired
an almost feudal suzerainty over their colleagues. Ensconced in the key
Armed Services and Appropriations committees, these men were astutely
cultivated by a succession of DCIs, and it was their indulgence that allowed
CIA to escape close legislative scrutiny for so long. By 1969, however,
Russell, Hayden, Vinson and Cannon had all departed, and their successors
found it impossible to ignore the demands for congressional reform. Over
the next few years both houses adopted new rules, including a number making
it much more difficult for a handful of senior figures to shield CIA as
Russell and others had done.
To complicate matters further, the Agency also found itself the
inadvertent victim of a bitter quarrel between Congress and the White House
over the proper division of powers in foreign affairs. As the Cold War
consensus fragmented, Congress moved to regain many of the responsibilities
it had abdicated to the executive branch since Franklin Roosevelt's day.
Voicing fears of an "imperial presidency," the lawmakers sought to legislate
limits to the President's freedom of action in world affairs in a variety of
ways. In June 1970, for example, 58 senators voted in favor of the
Cooper-Church amendment, which sharply restricted White House ability to
fund military action in Cambodia. Three months later, a switch of only nine
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votes would have resulted in a Senate prohibition against the use of public
monies to keep American troops in Vietnam beyond 1971. Both of these
actions, and others akin to them, reflected Congress's conviction that a
grave imbalance between executive and legislative powers had developed since
World War II.
Moves to require a more rigorous scrutiny of CIA activities were part of
this broader attempt to reverse presidential "encroachment" upon
congressional prerogatives. In the Senate, William Fulbright and Eugene
McCarthy led efforts to expand the existing oversight committees to include
members of the Committee on Foreign Relations. Persistent calls for a joint
CIA watchdog committee gathered wide support in both houses. Not all
suggestions for a joint committee were hostile; some congressmen saw such a
body as a means of defending CIA from unwarranted attacks. On the whole,
however, these legislative initiatives indicated that relations between
Congress and the Agency had entered a more troubled period.
Hoping to maintain the substance of their independence, CIA officials
responded with only limited countermeasures. Noting that even staunch
congressional friends were leaning toward a narrower concept 4f the Agency's
mission, the OLC annual report for 1972 conceded the necessity of giving
tactical ground in order to forestall restrictive legislation. In
retrospect, however, Agency actions appear circumscribed and unimaginative.
It initiated a programmed effort to brief all new members of Congress,
senior officials and OLC staffers made more formal appearances on Capitol
Hill, and Agency reports and estimates were disseminated to a wider
audience. But in the main, the Legislative Counsel concluded early in 1973,
"we must rely on the professionalism of our operations, on the integrity of
our product, and on our responsiveness to the legitimate interests and
demands of both the Legislative and Executive Branches to see us through
[this] patch of political turbulence."
Under Siege, 1973-1976
Unfortunately for CIA, a series of spectacular revelations and
accusations between 1973 and 1976 dramatically demonstrated the inadequacy
of CIA's defense measures. In rapid succession there were allegations that
the Agency had been implicated in the Watergate break-in and cover-up, that
it had been deeply involved in the overthrow and subsequent death of Chilean
President Allende, and that it had organized and run an extensive program of
domestic surveillance in blatant disregard of statutory prohibitions.
Stunned by these charges, both houses of Congress moved to establish select
committees with broad mandates to determine whether CIA and the nation's
other intelligence agencies had been involved in improper or illegal
activities.
The subsequent investigations by the Church and Pike Committees mark the
nadir in CIA's relations with Congress. Lurid accounts of assassination
attempts, drug testing, mail openings, and other abuses fostered the
impression that CIA had engaged in a systematic and widespread pattern of
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unlawful and immoral practices over many years. Many congressmen--indeed
many Americans--were only too ready to believe the worst. As the Watergate
hearings exposed President Nixon's arbitrary abuses of power and secretive
methods of governing, many suspected that vast misdeeds must also have
occurred in that most secret of agencies, CIA. Moreover, those who opposed
administration policy in Southeast Asia feared that the White House was
using CIA to circumvent the will of Congress. In this general atmosphere of
distrust, few heeded the findings of the Pike Committee, which though
condemnatory of CIA in many respects, concluded, "All evidence in hand
suggests that the CIA, far from being out of control, has been utterly
responsive to the President and the Assistant to the President for National
Security Affairs."
The New Oversight
In 1974 Congress responded to these sensational disclosures by enacting
the Hughes-Ryan amendment, which was designed to provide closer oversight of
CIA's covert operations. This legislation permitted CIA to e Pend funds
overseas only for intelligence-gathering purposes, unless the President
found that other tasks were important to American national security and
reported to Congress in a timely fashion" the description and scope of each
such assignment. Almost immediately a half dozen or more congressional
committees claimed the right to be so informed. Writing in 1976, a former
ranking Agency officer contended that this provision had resulted in "almost
every important project so briefed leaking to the public immediately and
being dropped."
Congress also took steps to increase its authority over Agency
appropriations and spending. In 1973, following DCI William Colby's
admission that to disclose CIA's aggregate budget figure would not create a
security problem, Senator William Proxmire introduced legislation to require
the Agency to publish its annual budget. Although the Senate defeated this
proposal, Senator John McClellan, chairman of the Appropriations Committee,
offered the specifics of CIA's budget to any congressman who asked. By 1975
the four oversight subcommittees had lost their claims to exclusive
knowledge of the Agency's budget, although a detailed breakdown of its
annual appropriations was not yet routinely made available to all
congressmen.
Seeking a more powerful voice in CIA affairs and determined to prevent
the recurrence of past abuses, the Senate in 1976 created a permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence to monitor the intelligence-related activities of
the government. In July 1977 the House of Representatives followed suit.
The formation of these committees marked a new stage in CIA's relations with
Congress. Whatever the difficulties in making this new oversight work, and
whatever nostalgia for the 1950s survives in CIA, Congress will never return
to the blind trust and benign neglect of the early Cold War years.
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