'LEAKY' OVERSIGHT COMMITTEES FRUSTRATE FOREIGN POLICY EFFORTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302330059-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 59
• Publication Date: July 25, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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APT' "',F
STAT
WASHINGTON TIMES
25 July 1985
Leakyoversi t co ttees
frustrate foreign ef
policy
forts
This is the first of several articles
on intelligence oversight.
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
In late 1981, President Reagan
authorized covert assistance to the
resistance forces in Nicaragua.
Within months, the particulars
leaked to U.S. newspapers, and a
covert operation became overt.
Congressional support evap-
orated. The Marxist Sandinista gov-
ernment in Managua suddenly was
awash in sentiments of solace and
goodwill from America and the
West.
The propaganda dividends are
only just now diminishing.
The leaks surrounding the Nica-
ragua operation caused "serious
divisiveness" between the CIA and
the congressional oversight commit-
tees, disrupting a period of relative
harmony that followed the anti-
intelligence hysteria of the
mid-1970s.
Gary Schmitt, who was minority
staff director for the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence until this
year, says the Nicaragua leak illus-
trates the difficulty of conducting
covert operations without a clear
national consensus of what the
nation wants its foreign policy to
accomplish.
In particular, Mr. Schmitt sees the
Nicaragua case as one example
where the congressional oversight
of intelligence played a major role in
influencing the conduct of foreign
affairs.
In essence, "only non-
controversial findings remain
covert," says Mr. Schmitt in a
forthcoming paper on intelligence
oversight.
Once public, whether disclosed
by the White House or the Congress,
congressional support for covert
operations inevitably unravels.
Under congressional rules, con-
gressmen cannot discuss intelli-
gence matters and are thus left to
posture against leaked operations as
a means of defense.
The president's freedom to
maneuver with a variety of "special
activities" - beyond diplomacy but
short of sending in the Marines - is
thus more limited.
Covert operations that have been
blown by leaks include the Nicara-
gua operation, support for Afghan
rebels through Egypt and China
after 1979, support for political par-
ties in El Salvador, support for Cam-
bodian rebels after 1980, support of
anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya and
Chad, and support for anti-Khomeini
exiles.
Mr. Schmitt, a former aide to Sen.
Daniel P. Moynihan, D-N.Y., says that
congressional oversight has, on the
whole, been "uneven;' and driven by
events rather than policy and par-
tisan.
Recently, Sen. Patrick Leahy of
Vermont, the Democratic vice chair-
man of the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee, announced that Democrats
on the panel would conduct an inde-
pendent investigation of stories of a
CIA counter-terrorist training pro-
gram in Lebanon among five other
CIA operations.
The Leahy announcment was
made the day The Washington Post
published a report from Lebanon
linking the CIA to a "runaway mis-
sion" by a Lebanese counter-
terrorist unit that had bombed a
building in a Beirut suburb. (The
House Intelligence Committee later
absolved the CIA of any links to ter-
rorism in Lebanon.)
A short time later, Sen. Leahy,
after accusing the CIA of not fully
informing Congress of its Lebanon
program - his suspicions presum-
ably encouraged by the erroneous
story in The Post - backed away
from what had taken on the appear-
ance of an investigation motivated
by partisan politics.
Sen. David Durenberger, R-Minn.,
the chairman of the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee, says the problem
of partisanship in the oversight pro-
cess only occurs "when covert
action becomes overt."
"Pat I Leahy l had a camera in
front of him and he had to say some-
thing;' Sen. Durenberger said in an
interview of the vice-chairman's
idea for a Democratic investigation.
"He feels strongly about counter-
terrorism, so he said it, and he
backed off because he was in a little
bit over his head."
Mr. Schmitt notes that the anti-
intelligence hysteria of the '60s was
the inevitable result of a breakdown
in the post-World War II foreign
policy consensus - a consensus dis-
solved by the frustrations and disap-
pointments of the Vietnam War and
the public disgust with government
institutions in the wake of
Watergate.
Many analysts trace the begin-
ning of modern intelligence over-
sight to late December 1974.
In a series of front page articles
in that month, The New York Times
reported that the CIA had engaged
in a "huge" domestic intelligence
program in violation of CIA reg-
ulations against conducting busi-
ness inside the United States.
The articles, citing "well-place
government sources:' touched off a
firestorm of congressional investi-
gations. Eight days after the first
article appeared, President Gerald
Ford signed into law the Hughes-
Ryan Amendment, restricting the
CIA from conducting any operations
without presidential approval -
eliminating the reliable intellin-
gence technique of "plausible
denial." The intelligence agencies
could no longer conduct covert oper-
ations that, if unsuccessful, would be
denied, leaving the president out of
it.
In addition, the law required the
CIA to report to "all appropriate
committees" - eventually eight leg-
islative bodies. The law all but
eliminated covert action operations
through unauthorized press disclo-
sures.
Besides the foreign affairs, armed
services and defense appropriations
subcommittees of both houses,
which excercised what Mr. Schmitt
called "de minimus" oversight since
1947, the intelligence agencies
would also report to the newly cre-
ated intelligence oversight commit-
tees, headed by Rep. Otis Pike and
Sen. Frank Church, respectively.
Continued
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2
The Church and Pike committees,
formed in January of 1975, spent a
year and half investigating the CIA
and found evidence of domestic sur-
veillance operations of individuals
tied to foreign powers, assassination
Plans (notably against Fidel Castro
and Africa's Patrice Lumumba),
mail intercepts from suspected for-
eign agents, plans to infiltrate
groups with foreign ties, and efforts
to topple foreign governments.
Sen. Church's widely reported
remark that the CIA was "a rogue
elephant" set the tone for congres-
sional oversight. In 1976 the Church
Committee became the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence,
with Sen. Church as chairman, and a
year later the Pike Committee
became the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence.
Roy Godson, a professor of gov-
ernment at Georgetown University
and an expert on intelligence issues,
called the oversight of the mid-1970s
the anti-intelligence "hysteria
Period" and described the Church
committee "incredibly biased"
No intelligence service in the
world has ever been subject to that
kind of investigation, Mr. Godson
said in an interview "It had a crazy
thesis - that covert action controls
the whole of the intelligence com-
munity.."
Mr. Schmitt describes the concept
that a representative body such as
Congress would attempt to reflect
and refine public opinion on intel-
ligence as "revolutionary."
"In fact this arrangement was not
only revolutionary in the United
States but the rest of the world as
well; no other legislature had ever
created such an entity" as congres-
sional Oversight Committee, Mr.
Schmitt said..
It wasn't until 1980 that the Intel-
ligence Oversight Act reduced to
two the number of committees the
intelligence agencies were required
to tell of their operations.
But the lack of consensus on for-
eign policy - and subsequently on
intelligence policy - has left the
oversight system "susceptible to
sudden and sometimes disabling
shocks;' Mr. Schmitt says.
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ARTICLE APPRED
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WASHINGTON TIMES
30 July JQR;
I Hill
oversight of intelligence
shifts focus to effectiveness.
This article is the second in an
occasional series on intelligence
oversight.
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
In 1978, a team of intelligence
experts with the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board com-
peted with the CIA in analyzing
Soviet strategic capabilities. They
came to the startling conclusion that
the CIA had been underestimating
Soviet nuclear capabilities for a dec-
ade.
Angelo Codevilla, an intelligence
expert with the Senate Select Com-
mittee on Intelligence until this year,
said the committee's 1978 report on
the competitive analysis, produced
by the Subcommittee on Collection,
Production and Quality, marked the
beginning of a new period of con-
gressional oversight.
He believes the findings of this
so-called "A Team-B Team" report
were an important first step in
reorienting the congressional over-
sight process. Instead of attempting
to uncover alleged abuses or place
restrictions on intelligence-
gathering activities, the oversight
committees began to examine the
quality of U.S. intelligence.
Mr. Codevilla said in a recent
interview that the findings of the
president's "B-Team" showed that
intelligence quality must be
checked. He compared the question-
ing of CIA estimates by outside
experts with the congressional
efforts to curb alleged abuses of the
CIA in the mid-1970s.
"The greatest abuse that could
ever have been perpetrated on the
American people is to have them
wake up 10 years after an event that
profoundly affects their likelihood of
staying alive and find that they
missed it;' Mr. Codevilla said of the
B-Team findings of Soviet strategic
capabilities.
Mr. Codevilla and other present
and former intelligence oversight
experts remain divided on how best
to improve U.S. intelligence cap-
abilities.
But interviews with congres-
sional intelligence experts reveal
that a fundamental shift in emphasis
has taken place in the last 10 years
that has led to modest improvements
in American intelligence cap-
abilities.
Where congressional committees
once sought to "legislate virtue" -
as one former intelligence official
described oversight - today's intel-
ligence committee chairmen have
begun to concentrate on improving
the effectiveness of intelligence col-
lection and anlaysis. In other words,
instead of placing curbs on intelli-
gence agencies, Congress today is
more concerned with cost effective-
ness.
Sen. Dave Durenberger, R-Minn.,
believes the solution to getting the
taxpayers' money's worth out of the
untold billions of dollars spent each
year on intelligence is to establish a
long-range strategy for the intelli-
gence community.
A member of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence since
1979, Sen. Durenberger was
appointed chairman earlier this
year. He does not agree with the pre-
vailing philosophy of past years,
which he characterized by the sim-
ple formula of telling the intelli-
gence community "make sure you
don't screw up"
"I think the best way to do over-
sight is to agree with the executive
branch [on] what intelligence is all
about, and [say] this is our long-
range plan to build the world's best
intelligence organization," Sen.
Durenberger said in a recent inter-
view
Last week Sen. Durenberger's
Intelligence Committee held closed-
door hearings on what he refers to as
long-range intelligence strategy. He
hopes the hearings will lead the
administration to target goals,
objectives and resource investment
for a 10-year or longer intelligence
policy.
Tb improve intelligence oversight,
Sen. Durenberger wants to prevent
"shifting resources every time the
political panic button gets hit [and]
you shift billions of dollars in com-
mitment from one part of the world
to the other part of the world. That's
ridiculous:' he said.
On the House side, Rep. Lee Ham-
ilton, D-Ind., sees intelligence over
sight as the only mechanism
available outside the executive
branch to check the administration's
use of an enormous intelligence
bureaucracy which churns out vast
quantities of data.
Rep. Hamilton, chairman of the
House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence, does not view the
oversight process as a means of cor-
recting abuses. His prescription for
improving intelligence is to
strengthen the analysis and collec-
tion components of intelligence and
to do away with military and para-
military covert operations.
"I look upon it as a means of try-
ing to -improve the intelligence
product and to provide the executive
branch with another set of opinions,
if you will, about intelligence oper-
ations;' Mr. Hamilton said in an
interview.
Mr. Hamilton believes one of the
"major questions" of oversight is
cost effectiveness. He is not satis-
fied that the intelligence community
has performed the best possible job
for the amount invested.
"We are spending a very large
amount of money, on intelligence,
[and] it is not just a question of are
you getting the intelligence, but are
you getting it to the right people at
the right time?" Mr. Hamilton said.
"That's really the critical point. It
doesn't matter how much mass of
intelligence data you produce. The
key thing is the analysis of that data
and getting it to the policymakers or
decision-makers at the right times
so that it's timely, in terms of the
decision-making process.
"I think we in the intelligence
committees and in the intelligence
community have to spend an awful
lot more time on the question of cost
effectiveness:' he said.
Regarding public perceptions of
intelligence oversight, Mr. Hamilton
said that "the media often mistakes
oversight for oversight of covert
action:'
"Oversight is much broader than
that and, if you look at the intelli-
gence budget, only a very, very small
portion of it goes for covert action -
very small," he said.
GAAf!IAEO
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The media, he said, tends to view
all covert action as miltary and para-
military operations, but "that repre-
sents a very small part of covert
action"
"I'm talking about ... genuine
intelligence work, as apart from
covert actions, which really are not
intelligence in the strictest sense,"
Mr. Hamilton said.
"If I were present at the creation,
in [former Secretary of State Dean]
Acheson's phrase, I'm not really
sure where I would put covert
actions:' Mr. Hamilton said.
He feels "uneasy" that covert
actions are conducted by the CIA,
"but I'd be uneasy if they were con-
ducted by the Defense Department.
I don't know where you put them."
A widely respected intelligence
expert, Mr. Codevilla believes the
efforts of Sen. Malcolm Wallop,
R-Wyo., along with Sen. Daniel P.
Moynihan, D-N.Y., and others on the
intelligence committees, succeeded
in initiating some reforms of the
agencies' analytical methods and
counterintelligence controls.
"They developed an entirely dif-
ferent approach, based on the
empirical proposition that the
United States does not have a surfeit
of intelligence;' Mr. Codevilla said in
an interview. "We have a variety of
shortfalls, and any reforms should
meet these shortfalls:' he said.
Mr. Codevilla said the congres-
sional and press "attack" on U.S.
intelligence agencies during the
mid-1970s grew out of internecine
bureaucratic conflict within the
intelligence community on resource
allocation. What was portrayed as a
fight over civil liberties was really a
struggle between proponents of
detente and cold warriors over the
agencies' reliance on technical sys-
tems - as opposed to human agents
- for collecting and analyzing data.
"We built up our entire arsenal of
technical intelligence wholely mind-
less that they are not working
against nature, but against human
beings;' Mr. Codevilla said.
Mr. Codevilla described the con-
flict within the intelligence agencies
over the integrity of technical intel-
ligence as the "primary issue" divid-
ing factions competing for
resources.
"It has less than zero to do with
civil liberties;' Mr. Codevilla said.
As result of the intelligence com-
munity conflict, vast numbers of the
most experienced Central Intelli-
gence Agency personnel left the
agency through voluntary and
forced retirements in what Mr.
Codevilla described as a purge of
"old boys"
"This transformation of
American intelligence occurred
between '74 and roughly '78 during
which time an estimated three-
quarters of all supergrades in the
CIA turned over - a huge turnover;'
Mr. Codevilla said.
Z.
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Ai, i ICLE APPEARED
AN PAGE ?
WASHINGTON TIMES
.8 August 1985
CIA and oversight groups
reaching amicable terms
The third in an occasional series on con-
gressional oversight of intelligence activities.
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Cooperation has improved between con-
gressional oversight committees and the
Central Intelligence Agency after a period of
"tenuous relations" with CIA Director Wil-
liam Casey over the issue of covert CIA sup-
port for Nicaraguan resistance forces.
Following press disclosures in the spring
of 1982 about CIA-supported operations, the
House of Representatives passed legislation
prohibiting support for anyone trying to over-
throw the Sandinista regime. Later disclo-
sures caused congressional support for the
operations to evaporate.
Then, earlier this year Congress approved
a $27 million non-military aid package, but
the CIA and Pentagon were barred from dis-
tributing the funds to the rebels.
Sen. Dave Durenberger, R-Minn., chairman
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelli-
gence, said the Nicaragua episode from
roughly 1981 to 1984 disrupted a long period
of improved relations between Congress and
the CIA. Beginning in 1981, trust between the
Senate oversight committee and the CIA
soured after the disclosures about Nicara-
guan covert operations.
"That period of time was unfortunately
characterized by the sort of tenuous relation-
ship between the DCI [Director of Central
Intelligence] and the Congress of the United
States;' Mr. Durenberger said in an interview
in his Senate office.
He said the problem was that "Bill [Casey]
was charged with running an overt, covert
action and there was no way he could make a
success of it."
"He treated us like we didn't know what
were doing and we treated him like he didn't
know what he was doing - it was not very
good oversight," he added
Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., Sen. Durenber-
ger's counterpart on the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, also agrees
relations have improved since the public rev-
elations of the Nicaraguan operations which
he described as atypical of oversight.
Mr. Hamilton said the CIA failed to inform
the House committee of "a number of things,"
but did not charge the agency with "bad faith"
or of trying to deceive the panel because its
members have a responsibility to "ask the
right questions."
"If we don't ask the right questions, we
don't get the right answers," he said.
He also believes the problem surrounding
poor relations with the CIA over the Nicara-
guan case was "attitudinal."
"The thing that frustrated the Nicaraguan
problem so greatly was that we kept getting
information from the media that we had not
had from the Central Intelligence Agency,"
Rep. Hamilton said, recalling the rocky
Period of 1983 and 1984.
After checking news reports with the CIA,
the agency would confirm details of the leaks
to the House committee, he said.
"So," Rep. Hamilton said, "there developed
a pattern of distrust, or a lack of confidence
that they were in fact reporting to us all sig-
nificant intelligence information."
The CIA's role in supporting rebels who
planted mines in Nicaraguan harbors was a
case in point, he said.
Under current U .S. law, the CIA is required
to inform the two intelligence committees
about all significant intelligence activity.
Problems in the Nicaraguan affair arose over
what was considered significant.
"Does the mining of a harbor constitute a
significant intelligence activity? Does the
publication of a manual which runs contrary
to American policy constitute it? It does in my
view - maybe it doesn't in somebody else's,"
Mr HamiIt
the agency must overcome its reluctance to
report to Congress unless arms are twisted,
he contended.
Rep. Hamilton dispelled the notion that Mr.
Casey created a "personality problem"
blocking effective congressional oversight, as
other congressmen have charged.
has relationship with
Bill Casey a personally thave a hink he h good
tried to keep the
committee and me well informed;' Mr. Ham-
ilton said.
Herb Romersten, a House Intelligence
Committee staff member during the contro-
versy over Nicaraguan covert aid, said the
leaks about Nicaragua resulted in "consider-
able bad blood" between congressional over-
sight staff members and CIA officers.
One example is provided by Mr.
Romerstein in a forthcoming paper on intelli-
gence oversight. He writes that in 1983 the
New York Times, quoting an unnamed Demo-
crat on the House Intelligence Committee,
falsely reported the CIA planned to march on
the Nicaraguan capital and overthrow the
Sandinista regime. The plot was allegedly
revealed by Mr. Casey in a secret briefing.
The Times reporter corrected the story a
day later saying the revelation did not come
out of a briefing, but was mentioned by Mr.
Casey as he left a briefing.
"This version was also false;' Mr. Romer-
stein states. "This writer left the room behind
Mr. Casey and no such conversation took
place;' he writes in the forthcoming book
"Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s:
Intelligence and Policy."
e
t
e mi
ing of the Nicaragua's harbors as one n
Sen. Durenberger characterized Senate that caused partisan divisions on the nor-
oversight of the CIA during the early 1980s as mally non-partisan committee.
"bring us your findings, covert action, your "There are no politics on this committee,
budget and when you get in hot water we're except when nobody is told we are going to
gonna have you in here and beat up on you,, mine harbors;' the senator said. "Then its
he said during a recent interview in his Senate every senator for himself."
office.
Since then, Mr. Casey and Sen. Durenber- a conThe key to fident relationship between the CIA and
ger have come to terms. After a series of Congress on the flow of information between
conversations "about [Mr. Casey's] attitude, the two entities, Mr. Hamilton said. Congress,
more than anything else, toward the process" for its part needs to back off the idea that
of oversight, the Senate committee chairman everything the CIA does is "nefarious," while
feels a renewed "trust relationship" has been
established.
on said.
Sen. Durenberger also mention
d
h
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