Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [15]
THE ROLE OF OVERSIGHT. For the first twenty-eight years of its existence, the intelligence community operated with a minimal amount of oversight from Congress. One reason was the cold war consensus. Another was a willingness on the part of Congress to abdicate rigorous oversight. Secrecy was also a factor, which appeared to impose procedural difficulties in handling sensitive issues between the two branches. After 1975, congressional oversight changed suddenly and dramatically, increasing to the point where Congress became a full participant in the intelligence process and a major consumer of intelligence. Since 2002, Congress has also become more of an independent intelligence consumer in its own right, in several cases requesting national intelligence estimates (NIEs) on specific topics.
MAJOR HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS
In addition to the themes that have run through much of the history of the intelligence community, several specific events played pivotal roles in the shaping and functioning of U.S. intelligence.
THE CREATION OF COI AND OSS (1940-1941). Until 1940 the United States did not have anything approaching a national intelligence establishment. The important precedents were the COI and the OSS, both created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At that time, the COI and OSS were headed by William Donovan, who had advocated their creation after two trips to Britain before the United States entered World War II. Donovan was impressed by the more central British government organization and believed that the United States needed to emulate it. Roosevelt gave Donovan much of what he wanted but in such a way as to limit Donovan’s authority, especially his relationship to the military.
In addition to being the first steps toward creating a national intelligence capability, the COI and OSS were important for three other reasons. First, both organizations were heavily influenced by British intelligence practices, particularly their emphasis on what is now called covert action—guerrillas, operations with resistance groups behind enemy lines, sabotage, and so on. For Britain this wartime emphasis on operations was the natural result of being one of the few ways the country could strike back at Nazi Germany in Europe until the Allied invasions of Italy and France. These covert actions, which had little effect on the outcome of the war, became the main historical legacy of the OSS.
Second, although OSS operations played only a small role in the Allied victory in World War II, they served as a training ground—both technically and in terms of esprit—for many people who helped establish the postwar intelligence community, particularly the CIA. However, as former DCI Richard Helms, himself an OSS veteran, points out in his memoirs, most of the OSS veterans had experience in espionage and counterintelligence and not in covert action.
Third, OSS had a difficult relationship with the U.S. military. The military leadership was suspicious of an intelligence organization operating beyond its control and perhaps competing with organic military intelligence components (that is, military intelligence units subordinated to commanders). The Joint Chiefs of Staff therefore insisted that the OSS become part of its structure, refusing to accept the idea of an independent civilian intelligence organization. Therefore, Donovan and the OSS were made part of the Joint Chiefs structure. Tension between the military and nonmilitary intelligence components has continued. with varying degrees