National Security Intelligence

by Loch K. Johnson

  Another role might be the “sleeping watch dog,” based on the CIA tale of the congressional response to the paramilitary briefing in the 1950s; or perhaps a “junkyard dog,” reminiscent of when Representatives Aspin and Mazzoli clamped their teeth around the ankle of DCI Turner. A former seasoned CIA officer, who once served as an Agency liaison officer to SSCI and HPSCI, suggested to the author some additional role types. “How about ‘grandstander,’ for the politician who bashes intelligence for political gain?” he proposed, only partially tongue-in-cheek, continuing: “or ‘weasel’ – a member of Congress who evades responsibility by being ostensibly shocked by matters on which they were full briefed?”

  For the purposes here, though, the four roles that follow – ostrich, cheerleader, lemon-sucker, and guardian – suggest a range of oversight involvement that members of SSCI and HPSCI have tended to display.

  The ostrich

  The first type of intelligence overseer is the “ostrich.” Here is the lawmaker who embraces a philosophy of benign neglect toward the intelligence agencies (see Figure 5.4). This view characterized almost all members of Congress before the domestic spy scandal of 1974. A classic illustration of the ostrich is Senator Barry Goldwater, who became chairman of SSCI in 1981. He had previously served as a member of the Church Committee. While on that Committee, Goldwater voted in 1976 against the creation of SSCI, the very panel that, ironically, he would come to lead. He also opposed most of the other ninety-eight reforms recommended by the Church Committee, including closer judicial scrutiny of wiretapping operations inside the United States and more extensive congressional hearings on CIA covert actions. Goldwater was content with the system of oversight that existed before 1975: an occasional review of secret activities by a few subcommittees on intelligence housed within the Armed Services and the Appropriations Committees.89

  Figure 5.4 A typology of roles assumed by intelligence overseers in the U.S. Congress

  The cheerleader

  The second type of intelligence overseer is the “cheerleader.” In this instance, the member of Congress has removed his or her head from the sand, but only for the purpose of cheering more loudly on behalf of the intelligence agencies. The cheerleader is interested primarily in the advocacy of spy activities, the support of intelligence budgets, and the advancement of clandestine operations at home and abroad against suspected enemies of the United States. During hearings, the cheerleader specializes in “softball” pitches – easy questions gently tossed so that intelligence managers called as witnesses can slug them over the center-field fence.90 In press conferences, the cheerleader acts as a defense attorney for America's secret agencies, hinting at their behind-the-scenes, “if you only knew” successes; lauding the heroism of intelligence officers and agents; castigating journalists for printing leaked secrets that imperil the nation; and warning of threats at home and abroad that could lead to another 9/11 if the intelligence agencies are hamstrung by kibitzing lawmakers and their staffs. Such statements by cheerleaders are often true: intelligence officers do have successes, they are occasionally heroes, sometimes they do prevent terrorist attacks. Yet the cheerleaders are one-sided in their perspective, lacking a critical eye for intelligence inadequacies that cry out for reform. Recall how Representative Boland assumed the role of cheerleader when he became the first chair of HPSCI in 1977. He often swallowed his personal skepticism about specific covert operations and expressed his support for the government's secret bureaucracy, determined to show that his Committee could be trusted as a responsible supervisor of intelligence operations on Capitol Hill.

  The lemon-sucker

  A third role type is the “lemon-sucker” – a term used by President Bill Clinton to describe economists who exhibited a sour disposition toward a government policy. This approach is as one-sided as the cheerleader, only at the opposite extreme. For the lemon-sucker, nothing the intelligence agencies undertake is likely to be worthwhile. From this point-of-view, the secret agencies are inherently immoral: opening and reading other people's mail, eavesdropping on telephone conversations and social media, stealing documents, overthrowing governments, perhaps even killing people with drone missiles or poisons. The skeptical lemon-suckers also charge the spy agencies with incompetence, pointing to the CIA's inability to dispatch foreign leaders on its hit list (despite many attempts) during the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations, the failure to anticipate either the fall of the Soviet Union or the 9/11 attacks, and the absence of predicted WMD in Iraq in 2002.91 For the most extreme skeptic, there is but one solution: shut down the CIA and the other secret agencies. In 1996, for example, a well-regarded member of SSCI, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D, New York), dismayed by the CIA's inability to anticipate the collapse of the Soviet empire, called for the Agency's abolition.92

  The guardian

  The fourth type of intelligence overseer is the “guardian.” This role conforms best with the hopes expressed by legislative reformers during the Year of Intelligence in 1975. Representative Lee Hamilton (D, Indiana), HPSCI chair from 1985 to 1987, has argued that the ideal intelligence overseers are both “partners and critics” of the secret agencies.93 Another HPSCI member, Norm Dicks (D, Washington), has said that “overseeing the intelligence community is like being a good parent: you have to encourage and discipline.”94

  As intelligence “partners,” lawmakers must educate the American people on the virtues of maintaining an effective intelligence capability for the sake of America's security. Without defenders on Capitol Hill, the spy agencies are at a major disadvantage in gaining public support for their secret activities and sizable budgets. Yet, to be an effective overseer, a lawmaker must also be a critic: someone who searches for, acknowledges, and corrects programmatic flaws. This challenging role requires the ability, above all, to be objective and to speak out against questionable activities (in closed hearings on those occasions when operations are too sensitive for public review). Lee Hamilton has come as close to this ideal as any member of SSCI or HPSCI. When he was head of HPSCI, he regularly convened committee meetings, paid close attention to memos and reports from his staff and the intelligence agencies, followed up on media allegations of intelligence wrongdoing or mistakes, and spent long hours reviewing budgets and talking to intelligence professionals. Yet remember how even Hamilton faltered during the Iran–contra scandal in the mid-1980s. When staffers on the NSC assured him they were not involved in these illegal operations, Hamilton, along with other SSCI and HPSCI leaders, accepted these assurances at face value95 – always a mistake when rumors to the contrary are rampant and highlight the need for a more formal probe.

  The dynamic nature of intelligence accountability

  During their tenures, individual members of SSCI and HPSCI have sometimes displayed more than one approach to intelligence supervision. An illustration of this migration of lawmakers between the four oversight roles is displayed in Figure 5.5. Representative Boland, for example, felt it necessary to be a strong supporter of the intelligence agencies in 1977–80, thereby offsetting the bad impression left by the Pike Committee's strident criticism of the CIA. As the 1980s progressed, however, Boland began to drift away from the posture of cheerleading to assume a more balanced stance as a guardian. By 1982, he had become increasingly concerned about DCI Casey and his use of covert action to advance the contras against the Sandinista Marxist regime in Nicaragua. Boland, joined by a majority in the Congress (controlled by Democrats at the time), concluded that the mining of Nicaraguan harbors and the blowing up of power lines – along with other extreme paramilitary operations – were excessive responses to the minimal threat posed by the President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista regime. Boland introduced and guided to passage seven eponymous amendments, each progressively restricting the use of paramilitary and other extreme CA operations in Nicaragua.

  Figure 5.5 Illustrations of role migration and stability among intelligence overseers in Congress, 1977–2004

  By the time
his tenure as HPSCI Chairman had come to an end in 1985, Boland's relations with DCI Casey had substantially deteriorated. Boland had undergone a metamorphosis from cheerleader to guardian, then to a full-fledged lemon-sucker. As illustrated in Figure 5.5, he began in cell two, traveled to cell four for a brief period, and then settled in cell three. In Boland's case, the stimuli for these changes were twofold: first, what he perceived as the Reagan Administration's overheated response to events in Central America; and, second, a new, aggressive, and arrogant DCI (Casey) who did nothing to hide his disdain toward the notion of congressional intelligence oversight. Casey once explained his “theory” of intelligence oversight in this manner: “The job of Congress is to stay the f— out of my business.”96 First, policy (paramilitary operations in Nicaragua), then personality (Casey's irascibility and his negative view of Congress) transformed Chairman Boland's approach to intelligence accountability dramatically from cheerleader to skeptic or lemon-sucker.

  Senator Goldwater went on a similar, though even more tortuous, odyssey within the SSCI. With his head mostly in the ground during the first few years of his SSCI chairmanship (1981–83), Goldwater initially played the role of ostrich, deferring to DCI Casey and the intelligence agencies. He reasoned that the intelligence bureaucrats should be trusted to do a good job in the trying circumstances of the Cold War – the same guiding philosophy of “the good old days” of intelligence oversight (pre-1975).

  Then, in 1984, William Casey managed to do the seemingly impossible: he single-handedly turned the Intelligence Community's most reliable ostrich, Goldwater, into one of its most vocal lemon-suckers. The catalyst in this dramatic transformation was Casey's misleading testimony during an appearance before Goldwater's Committee. When asked by a SSCI member whether the CIA was mining harbors in Nicaragua, the DCI offered an adamant “no” in response. Only later did it become clear that Casey was relying on a technical point: the Agency was not mining harbors; it was mining piers within the harbors. This attempt to toy with the SSCI angered its Chairman, his institutional pride trumping his former feelings of blind deference toward the Intelligence Community – at least temporarily. Goldwater fired off a letter to one of the best venues in the nation's capital for venting: the Washington Post. Castigating Casey for his attempts at legerdemain on Capitol Hill, the letter said in part: “It gets down to one, little, simple phrase: I am pissed off!”97 As Goldwater's ire over Casey receded, however, the Chairman drifted into a cheerleading role (though not an ostrich) for the remainder of his tenure on SSCI through 1985.

  Additional illustrations about the sometimes fluctuating nature of oversight roles come from the period just before and right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States. Richard C. Shelby (R, Alabama) initially came to Congress as a Democrat in 1987 and eight years later joined most of his Southern colleagues in a switch to the GOP as conservatism deepened in Dixie. He led SSCI from 1997 to 2001. Initially, Shelby oscillated between the roles of ostrich and cheerleader, apparently seeing few imperfections in the work of the Intelligence Community during his first years in the Committee's wheelhouse. This sanguine outlook would soon begin to fade, however. In 1998, after India tested a nuclear bomb – an event that the CIA forecasted would not happen – Shelby questioned DCI George Tenet over the telephone about the intelligence failure. “Senator, we were clueless,” replied the DCI, a troubling response that reportedly initiated doubts in Shelby's mind about the competence of the Intelligence Director.98

  Subsequently, on April 26, 1999, Tenet failed to invite the SSCI Chairman to the christening of the new George H. W. Bush Center for Intelligence (named by Congress after the only DCI to become president). The Shelby–Tenet relationship circled down the drain in the aftermath of that perceived slight. Finally, after the 9/11 attacks, Shelby came to the conclusion that Tenet had failed to warn the nation sufficiently about the Al Qaeda terrorist peril. The DCI needed to go.99 Thereafter, the SSCI Chair waxed ever more critical of Tenet and the intelligence agencies during the rest of his time on SSCI (where he remained for an additional three years as the ranking minority member when his chairmanship came to an end as the Democrats took over the Senate). In the case of Richard Shelby, the perceived 9/11 failure, combined with a sense of personal insult over being excluded from the Bush Center ceremonies, again transformed a cheerleader into a lemon-sucker.

  The next SSCI Chairman (2001–02), Bob Graham, likewise moved from cheerleader on the Senate Committee (in 2001) to a lemon-sucker (from 2002 to 2004), as a result of yet another confrontation between a SSCI chair and a DCI (Tenet again). In this instance, Graham's pique stemmed from procedural slaps in the face, some of which the Chairman (like Shelby) took as a personal affront.100

  After the 9/11 attacks, Graham became co-chair (along with HPSCI leader Porter Goss, R, Florida) of a special Joint Committee that temporarily combined SSCI and HPSCI to investigate the 9/11 intelligence failures. Once hearings began, Graham and Tenet soon clashed over the Committee's authority and procedures. When Graham asked the DCI to be brief in his introductory remarks before the panel, Tenet instead went on at length and, according to a newspaper report, in a “somewhat defiant tone.”101 With a preternatural obstinacy when challenged, Tenet also refused to declassify some intelligence documents that Graham thought important for the public record. Further, the DCI frequently caused havoc in the Committee's proceedings by denying access to basic intelligence documents related to the 9/11 attacks, refusing at the last minute to allow scheduled intelligence officers to testify before the Committee, and even canceling his own appearance scheduled for a closed hearing. Tenet's script seemed to have consisted solely of the words of King Lear on his daughter Cordelia's death: “never, never, never, never, never.”

  This is not the way senators, particularly committee chairs, like to be treated. As the DCI stonewalled and slow-rolled the Joint Committee, Graham started his transition from cheerleader to lemon-sucker. After Tenet's continued disruptions and disrespect, Graham finally exploded and accused the intelligence chief of “obstructionism” and “unacceptable” behavior.102 His anger increased further when the executive branch refused to declassify a section of the Joint Committee report (twenty-eight pages) that, according to the Senator, spelled out troubling ties between the 9/11 terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia.103

  In search of guardians

  The time and study required to become an effective legislative supervisor for the spy agencies, plus the lack of credit back home for engaging in intelligence oversight, sums to an unattractive formula for lawmakers concerned about re-election. They usually conclude that their time is better spent raising campaign funds and pursuing legislative goals that are more closely reported on by the media – especially in their home state. Yet what about future intelligence failures that could lead to even more drastic attacks against the United States than those experienced by the nation on 9/11? What if lawmakers could have prevented the failures of 9/11, or the invasion of Iraq based on the faulty assumption that Saddam Hussein had WMD, by way of a more robust review of intelligence procedures, the effectiveness of information-sharing arrangements among the agencies (especially between the CIA and the FBI), and the quality of intelligence collection and analysis on such topics as Al Qaeda and Iraq? What member of Congress wants to explain to constituents why he or she was too busy fundraising to improve, through serious hearings and budget reviews, the readiness of America's intelligence agencies?

  The role of guardian was widely accepted by intelligence reformers on Capitol Hill in 1975 as the ideal, because it balanced support for intelligence with a determination through persistent program review to avoid future agency failures and scandals. In pursuit of this objective, how can members of Congress be encouraged to spend more time on serious program evaluation? What incentives can be introduced into the culture of Capitol Hill to make intelligence accountability a more valued pursuit?

  Some initiatives to encourage better intelligence ov
ersight could include greater recognition of lawmakers who perform with distinction as overseers. This recognition could take the form of increased perks, such as improved office space and parking opportunities in Congress, along with augmented funds for travel and staff support dispensed by party leaders to lawmakers known for their oversight tenacity and fairness. Closer media coverage of oversight activities would help, too, as well as the bestowing of “Overseer of the Year” awards by civic groups to acknowledge the hard work of those members of Congress who devote time and energy to intelligence oversight hearings and budget reviews.104 Further, academic researchers and teachers at all levels of education could pay more attention to this neglected responsibility of Congress, explaining to rising citizens the importance of accountability.

  One might think that enough oversight incentives already exist. In the first instance, the quality of intelligence accountability could well determine the degree of protection afforded the American people against domestic spy scandals. Moreover, another powerful incentive should be the desire of lawmakers to improve America's intelligence shield, thereby helping to ward off future terrorist attacks against the United States; or to avoid further faulty conclusions about unconventional weapons abroad of the kind that helped draw the United States into war with Iraq in 2003 and could lead the nation into war again. Former DCI Robert M. Gates has well stated the case for intelligence oversight on Capitol Hill: