Intelligence, Iraq and the limits of legislative accountability during political crisis

Abstract

This article argues that there is an inherent tension in legislative intelligence oversight bodies between their responsibility to the voters who elect them and their political parties who select them to run for office. At a time of acute political crisis, the partisan interests of the legislators who sit on oversight bodies may override their other responsibilities. This can result in distorted and misleading investigations and reports. This hypothesis is examined against the evidence of precisely such a mode of failure in both the British and American legislative inquiries into intelligence on Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’. The authors conclude that any effective oversight must include a range of parallel legislative, judicial, executive and independent mechanisms to try and minimize the inherent weaknesses in each oversight model.