CIA AND CONGRESS PAPER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90M00004R000300120022-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 19, 2011
• Sequence Number: 22
• Publication Date: November 24, 1987
• Content Type: MEMO

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24 November 1987
MEMORANDUM FOR: David Gries
Director, Office of Congressional Affairs
FROM: J. Kenneth McDonald
Chief, DCI History Staff
SUBJECT: "CIA and Congress" Paper
Dave,
This morning your office asked us to send you the latest edition of our
"CIA and Congress" paper, which is attached. It's the same as last July's
revision, with a slight title change (it was "CIA and Congressional
Oversight"), and the addition of your suggested changes in the discussion of
the Pike Committee report (bottom of p. 7) and of the Nicaraguan mining flap
(top of p. 10). The Publication Review Board has also approved the July
revision.
J. Kenneth McDonald
Attachment
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DCI History Staff
November 1987
CIA AND CONGRESS
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. MutualV
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 to 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.
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Congress demonstrated its deference to CIA's special requirements during
the annual appropriation process. The Director usually appeared before the
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 agencies 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
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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
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.
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.
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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
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 Nations -Student 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.
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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
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 absence of any formal requirements for
CIA to report to Congress, oversight continued to consist mainly of
occasional DCI briefings for individual congressional leaders. In 1971, for
example, the CIA subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee held no
formal meetings, and it met only once in 1972 and 1973. In the Senate,
William Fulbright and Eugene McCarthy led unsuccessful efforts to expand the
existing oversight subcommittees 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 of the Agency's
mission, the Office of Legislative Counsel's 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 Office of Legislative Counsel-
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
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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.
In late 1974 Congress responded to some of these sensational disclosures by
enacting the Hughes-Ryan Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, which was
designed to provide closer oversight of CIA's covert operations. This
legislation permitted CIA to expend 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 operation. Almost
immediately a half dozen congressional committees claimed the right to be so
informed. Although the Amendment provided Congress with neither prior
notification nor approval of covert operations, a former ranking Agency
officer contended in 1976 that it 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 existing 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.
The congressional reaction to the mounting charges against CIA soon went
beyond these steps. In early 1975 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, wire taps, and other
abuses fostered the impression that CIA had engaged in a systematic and
pervasive pattern of unlawful and immoral practices over many years. Many
congressmen--indeed many Americans--were only too ready to believe the
worst. The Watergate hearings' exposure of President Nixon's abuses of
power and secretive methods had prepared the public to suspect that vast
misdeeds must also have occurred in that most secret of agencies, CIA.
Of the two congressional investigations, the Pike Committee's work
proved abortive and relatively ineffectual. In January 1976 the House of
Representatives voted not to release the Pike Committee Report, which
proposed (after contentious and unsatisfactory negotiations with the White
House) to disclose still-classified information. The immediate leak of this
report to NBC News and the Village Voice brought renewed charges that
Congress could not protect secret intelligence information. Yet even as it
roundly condemned CIA in many respects, the report concluded (somewhat
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ambivalently) that "A11 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 Senate Select Committee, chaired by Frank Church, was a far more
formidable and effective body. In April of 1976, after 15 months' work, the
Church Committee released the six volumes of its final report. Its earlier
publications included the Interim Assassination Report and Chile Covert
Action Report, and three more volumes of staff studies (including a short
History of the Central Intelligence Agency by Dr. Anne Karalekas) were
released in May. Out of this two-feet high stack of reports, the Committee
produced three principal recommendations, with considerable confidence in a
congressional and public consensus for their implementation. Conceding that
the U.S. intelligence agencies had made important contributions to the
nation's security, and had "generally performed their missions with
dedication and distinction," the Committee's report recognized the
continuing need for an effective system of foreign and military
intelligence. To improve this system its three main recommendations were
first, the passage of a legislative charter to govern all intelligence
organizations; secondly the formation of permanent congressional oversight
committees; and thirdly, the curtailment of all sorts of covert operations,
so that they would be employed only the most extraordinary circumstances,
when American vital interests were at stake.
Oversight since 1976
The Church Committee report opened a new period in relations between
Congress and the CIA. For the first time the Agency's activities had been
subjected to intense and prolonged public scrutiny and debate. Determined
to make the nation's intelligence community accountable to Congress and the
public as well as to the President, the legislative branch sought a more
powerful voice in intelligence affairs. Accepting the Church Committee's
recommendation, in May 1976 the Senate created a permanent Select Comnittee
on Intelligence (SSCI) to monitor the intelligence-related activities of the
government. A year later, in July 1977, the House of Representatives
followed suit by establishing its own Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence (HPSCI).
Over the next few years, Agency officers worked closely with the new
committees to overcome the suspicion and mutual recriminations that were the
legacy of the mid-1970s. Staffing levels in the CIA's Office of Legislative
Counsel suggest something of the magnitude of this effort. From ten
staffers in mid-1975 the number had tripled, to 30, by 1977; two years
later, in 1979, it had reached 36. This was a period of dramatically
expanded congressional interest in virtually all facets of the Agency's
organization, operations, policies and products. Together, CIA and Congress
moved to erase the bitterness of the past, to improve Agency performance, to
cut down on leaks in classified information, and generally to restore public
and legislative confidence in the Agency's integrity and effectiveness.
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The formation of the two permanent intelligence committees had increased
to eight the number of committees that the President had to inform of covert
operations. By 1980, however, the two select intelligence committees were
well enough established to be able to insist upon stricter controls over the
dissemination of sensitive information within Congress. Reversing the trend
of the 1970s, the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980 reduced the number of
committees to which the President was required to report covert operations
from eight to two--SSCI and HPSCI. This act also allowed the President,
under certain specific conditions, to dispense with prior notification of
covert activities, so long as he reported these activities to these two
committees in "timely fashion," and provided a formal statement of the
reasons impelling him to dispense with prior notice. The Intelligence
Oversight Act, which was incorporated into the 1947 National Security Act,
both repealed the 1974 Hughes-Ryan amendment and provided a firm statutory
basis for congressional oversight.
The new intelligence committees have produced other important
legislation. The Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 regulated electronic
surveillance, and the Classified Information Procedures Act of 1980
(sometimes called the "graymail" act), established new procedures for the
introduction and protection of classified information in court trials. More
recently, Congress has enacted the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of
1982, as well as the CIA Information Act of 1984, which exempts certain
operational files from search under the Freedom of Information Act.
Having found the National Security Act of 1947 no longer an adequate
framework for the conduct of U.S. intelligence activities, the Church
Committee had proposed that the highest priority of business for the new
intelligence oversight committees would be omnibus legislation to establish
"charters" for the intelligence agencies, and to define their relationship
with Congress. For nearly three years after its creation, SSCI devoted
itself to an ambitious effort to draw up this kind of comprehensive and
detailed charter for CIA and the rest of the intelligence community.
Although the Church Committee report seemed to have produced a consensus for
an intelligence charter, the consensus had clearly evaporated by 1978, when
SSCI circulated a 283 page draft bill that proposed complicated and detailed
regulations for all sorts of intelligence activities. HPSCI remained aloof
and detached from this legislative effort, which had lost its impetus in
SSCI by 1979. No such bill was ever enacted into law. The growing evidence
that CIA intended to cooperate fully with its new oversight bodies doubtless
helped persuade Congress that a formal charter offered more liabilities than
benefits. More importantly, however, events in the last two years of
President Carter's tenure, especially in Afghanistan and Iran, made the
administration less receptive to further restrictions on intelligence
activities.
With respect to the Church Committee's third principal recommendation,
for an end to covert operations except in exceptional cases, Agency
relations with Capitol Hill in the 1980s have been difficult and uncertain.
The current administration's use of CIA to support Third World anticommunist
guerrilla forces--most notably, the Nicaraguan contras--has prompted renewed
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controversy within Congress. In at least one highly publicized case,
involving the mining of Nicaraguan harbors in 1984, the difficult question
of how soon and in what detail the Agency should inform its oversight
committees about covert operations led to charges of bad faith on CIA's
part. That incident provoked an acrimonious exchange of letters between the
DCI and the SSCI Chairman, Senator Barry Goldwater, and triggered the
temporary resignation of SSCI's vice chairman, Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan. Eighteen months later, another public letter--this one from DCI
Casey to Senator David Durenberger, Goldwater's successor as SSCI
chairman--complained that congressional oversight was being conducted in an
"off-the-cuff" manner, and highlighted continuing differences of opinion as
to what proper legislative. oversight should entail. The current Iran-Contra
affair has, of course, produced a whole new set of questions concerning the
nation's use of covert action, and the executive branch's accountability for
such operations. At issue are the philosophy, goals and strategies behind
the "Reagan Doctrine," its efforts to contain or dismantle Marxist regimes
in the developing world, and its reliance on covert operations to pursue
this policy. So long as no national or congressional consensus exists on
these basic questions, CIA's role in covert action is likely to remain a
focus of controversy.
In fact, the infrequent but highly visible quarrels between CIA and its
oversight committees since 1981 too easily obscure the fact that CIA's
committees and the Congress as a whole have provided consistent support for
the Agency. The early 1980s saw an unprecedented build-up in American
defense capabilities, and as part that build-up, a significant growth in CIA
and the intelligence community. This growth reinvigorated CIA's covert
operations capabilities, and the oversight committees helped provide the
resources that made the expansion of this kind of activity possible. In
recent years the Agency has had consistent bipartisan congressional backing
for increased budgets, strategic planning, and the improvement of
intelligence collection and analysis.
Within CIA, responsibility for overseeing the Agency's relationship with
Congress resided within the Office of Legislative Counsel and its successor
organizations, including the current Office of Congressional Affairs (OCA).
OCA in recent years has averaged about 33 staff members, a far cry from the
small staffs of earlier days. Even so, this enlarged staff has struggled to
keep pace with the increased workload required to service recent
Congresses. Each year CIA sends several thousand classified publications to
Capitol Hill, and Agency officers give over a thousand briefings to staffers
from HPSCI, SSCI, and other committees. The DCI and DDCI testify
frequently, while other Agency officers brief individual Members of Congress
and participate in a multitude of committee hearings. Having become a major
consumer of CIA-produced intelligence, Congress relies extensively on this
information in legislating on many crucial national issues. As a senior
Agency official has pointed out, the flow of intelligence information to
Capitol Hill gives Congress a powerful weapon in its struggle for a greater
voice in the making of defense and foreign policy. This situation suggests
a sort of symbiotic relationship between Congress and CIA, with each
organization dependent upon the other.
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In spite of their occasional (and well-reported) differences, CIA and
its oversight committees in fact share a common mission: to ensure that the
best intelligence possible is collected, interpreted and disseminated in
time to help in the formulation of American national security policy.
Whatever the difficulties in making oversight work, and whatever nostalgia
for the lax oversight of the 1950s survives in CIA or elsewhere, Congress
will never return to the unquestioning trust and benign neglect of the early
Cold War years. This is as it should be, for the relationship between CIA
and the Congress is too valuable to lie unattended. Nurturing that
relationship will help insure that CIA receives the resources, legislation,
and understanding that it needs to fulfill its mission, and that the nation
continues to be served by a first-class and fully accountable intelligence
organization.
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