Congress and Oppositional Oversight

Abstract

The old tradition was that you don't ask: It was a consensus that intelligence was apart from the rules … that was the reason we did step over the line in a few cases, largely because no one was watching. No one was there to say don't do that. William Colby, DCI, 1973–76 The previous chapters described the history of the CIA and the legislative oversight committees respectively. They show how the CIA developed in light of a wartime requirement and then was left to find its own way over the subsequent decades. Its wartime roots, specialized mission, and isolation from regular government created a unique and demanding institutional culture that regulates how the agency interacts with the outside world and how its personnel behave. Challenges to behavioral expectations – particularly divulging internal information – are met with swift internal consequences. This institutional culture and the rules and regulations that contribute to it are the central functional method for managing secrecy – for protecting the core of the Agency's technical mission. Chapter 3 focused on the origins of legislative over-sight mechanisms that emerged out of scandal and discussed how they developed to take an unprecedented role in supervising intelligence activities. This chapter explores the dynamics of the relationship between the executive and legislative branches regarding the oversight of intelligence. Similar to development in other parts of the government, change has been driven by tension – or opposition – between the branches and has occurred incrementally. Tension has developed at particular pivot points – in several cases due to political scandal – and the oversight mechanisms have adapted to engage with each set of emergent issues. What has developed out of this relationship can be termed a collaboration – as counterintuitive as this may sound. Over time, a system has developed that incorporates both sides of this oppositional relationship.