Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [157]
TREATIES. Advising and consenting to an act of treaty ratification is also a power of the Senate. Unlike nominations, which require a majority vote of the senators present, treaties require a two-thirds vote of those present. Intelligence became a significant issue in treaties during the era of U.S.-Soviet arms control in the 1970s. The ability to monitor adherence to treaty provisions was and is an intelligence function. U.S. policy makers also called on the intelligence community to give monitoring judgments on treaty provisions—that is, to adjudge the likelihood that significant cheating would be detected. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, created in 1976, was later given responsibility for evaluating the intelligence community’s ability to monitor arms control treaties. The committee gave the Senate another lever with which to influence intelligence policy. In 1988, for example, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on evaluating the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and concerned about the upcoming Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). demanded the purchase of additional imagery satellites. The Reagan administration, w hich had not been averse to spending money on intelligence, argued that the additional satellites were unnecessary. However, the chair of the Senate committee, David L. Boren, D-Okla., made it clear that purchase of the satellites was a price of Senate consent to the treaties.
REPORTING REQUIREMENTS. The separation of powers between the executive branch and the legislative branch puts a premium on information. The executive tends to forward information that is supportive of its policies: Congress tends to seek fuller information to make decisions based on more than just the views that the executive volunteers. One of the ways Congress has sought to institutionalize its broad access to information is to levy reporting requirements on the executive branch. Congress often mandates that the executive report on a regular basis (often annually) on specific issues, such as human rights practices in foreign nations, the arms control impact of new weapons systems, or, during the cold war, Soviet compliance with arms control and other treaties.
Reporting requirements, which grew dramatically in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, raise several issues. Does Congress require so many reports that it cannot make effective use of them? Do the reports place an unnecessary burden on the executive branch? Would the executive branch forward the same information if there were no reporting requirements? To give some sense of the scope of activity involved, in 2002 the House Intelligence Committee said it had asked for eighty-four reports in the past year, most of which were either late or incomplete.
An important but less visible adjunct to reporting requirements is congressionally directed actions, or CDAs. CDAs are most often studies that the intelligence community is tasked to conduct by Congress, most often via the intelligence authorization act. CDAs are but one more opportunity for Congress to get the information it desires from the executive branch. As a rule, the offices responsible for producing the CDAs find them bothersome and intrusive. CDAs can be a dangerous tool in that they are cost-free for members of Congress and their staff. They have to do no more than levy the requirement. But CDAs do