INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT

Material Prior to the 1990s

J - Z

Johnson, Loch K.

1. "Controlling the CIA: A Critique of Current Safeguards." Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 12, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 371-396.

2. "Controlling the Quiet Option." Foreign Policy 39 (Summer 1980): 143-153.

A former member of the Church Committee staff, and proponent of stronger oversight, looks at the covert action oversight legislation passed in 1980.

3. "Legislative Reform of Intelligence Policy." Polity 17, no. 3 (Spring 1985): 549-573.

4. "The U.S. Congress and the CIA: Monitoring the Dark Side of Government." Legislative Studies Quarterly 5 (Nov. 1980): 477-499.

This article is dated today, but Lowenthal does note that it suggests "many of the variables (personality, politics, perks, etc.) that intrude on the oversight process."

Johnson, Loch K. A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. A Season of Inquiry: Congress and Intelligence. Chicago: Dorsey, 1988. [pb] JK468I6J64

Clark comment: Johnson was a staff member of the Church Committee. This work details the committee's inner workings.

Strong, IJI&C 1.2, sees A Season of Inquiry as "very conversational." Johnson is "disturbingly observant of institutional peculiarities and individual proclivities.... What is brought into question here is the basic institutional competence of the Senate." For Lowenthal, Johnson is "predisposed favorably towards Church"; but he "also notes the Chairman's shortcomings and their effects on the investigation."

Writing some years after its original publication, Valcourt, IJI&C, 5.2, calls the book the "best study of the early years of today's congressional oversight committees."

See also Edward F. Sayle, "Ten Years Later: The Church Committee Investigations Reexamined," Periscope 11, no. 1 (1986): 4-8.

Karalekas, Anne. "Intelligence Oversight: Has Anything Changed?" Washington Quarterly 6 (Summer 1982): 22-30.

Lardner, George, Jr. "Congress Overlooks Oversight: Missing Intelligence Charters." Nation, 2 Sep. 1978, 168-171.

Maury, John M. "CIA and the Congress." Studies in Intelligence 18, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 1-14.

The problem "is whether an organization like CIA can operate in American society without being so open as to be professionally ineffective, or so secret as to be politically unacceptable."

Nedzi, Lucien N. [Rep., D-MI] "Oversight or Overlook: Congress and the U.S. Intelligence Agencies." Studies in Intelligence 18, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 15-20.

These are Nedzi's remarks to the CIA Senior Seminar, 14 November 1973. He suggests that "it is a bit unsettling that 26 years after the passage of the National Security Act the scope of real Congressional oversight, as opposed to nominal Congressional oversight, remains unformed and unclear." (italics in original)

Oseth, John M. Regulating U.S. Intelligence Operations: A Study in Definition of the National Interest. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1985.

Valcourt, IJI&C, 5.2, says this is the "best overall study of executive branch oversight." Similarly, Lowenthal sees the book as "a very thoughtful discussion of the issues involved in having an operational capability that is in some way accountable to proper political control."

For Strong, IJI&C 1.2, "most of the work ... serves well as a tutorial on the opinions presented." However, the "broad, general condemnation of intelligence as an institution ... fails."

Johnson, I&NS 1.2, finds Oseth's work to be "largely free of ideological passion" in its examination of how the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations "responded to the pressures for increased intelligence regulation." For the reviewer, the main weakness of the book "is its failure to emphasize the enduring significance of the reforms that did take place in 1976-77 and 1980."

Pell, Eve. "White House Secret Powers: The Backbone of Hidden Government." The Nation 248, no. 24 (19 Jun. 1989): 833 ff.

Valcourt, IJI&C 3.2: "While reflecting an often excessive liberal apprehension about the possibility of a statist secret government headed by the national security apparatus, the article nonetheless raises important points pertaining to the manner in which such directives [SDDs] are circulated to the NSC staff and the ease with which they bypass the Congress."

Rindskopf, Elizabeth R. "Intelligence Oversight in a Democracy." Houston Journal of International Law 11, no. 1 (1988): 21-30.

Top legal counsel at both NSA and CIA.

Sandler, Norman D. Twenty-Eight Years of Looking the Other Way: Congressional Oversight of the CIA, 1947-1975. Cambridge, MA: Center for International Studies, 1975. [Wilcox]

Schmitt, Gary J., and Abram N. Shulsky. "The Theory and Practice of Separation of Powers: The Case of Covert Action." In The Fettered Presidency, eds. L. Gordon Crovitz and Jeremy A. Rabkin, 59-81. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1989.

This article provides a sound overview of congressional oversight of covert action.

Schwartzman, Robin Herman. "Fiscal Oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency: Can Accountability and Confidentiality Coexist?" New York University Journal of Law and Politics 7 (Winter 1974): 493-543.

Sciaroni, Bretton G. "The Theory and Practice of Executive Branch Intelligence Oversight." Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 12, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 397-432.

Strong, J. Thompson. "Covert Activities and Intelligence Operations: Congressional and Executive Roles Redefined." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 1, no. 2 (May 1986): 63-72.

Warner, John S. "The Watchdog Committee Question." Studies in Intelligence 10, no. 3 (Summer 1966): 31-41.

Writing in the mid-1960s, the author correctly concluded that the possibility of a congessional joint committee on intelligence was problematical at best. "The Administration's position will undoubtedly continue to be in opposition.... Further, the leadership in the Congress will continue to oppose the idea. With this opposition and without the support of a significant number of ... members [of Congress], it is difficult to see a joint comiittee proposal getting serious consideration in the foreseeable future."

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