Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [167]
In its own accidental way, Congress may have achieved the right balance, with a bipartisan inlelligence committee in one chamber and a partisan committee in the other.
COMMITTEE TURF. All congressional committees guard their areas of jurisdiction jealously. For example, in 1976 when the Senate was considering the creation of an intelligence committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee resisted, seeking to preserve its jurisdiction over the DCI and the CIA. Dividing issues or agencies cleanly and clearly between or among committees is not always possible, in which cases the jurisdiction is shared and certain bills get referred to more than one committee. But jurisdiction equates to power.
There is also a more subtle aspect to congressional jurisdiction. Committees tend to become protectors of the agencies they oversee, at least when the jurisdiction or authority of these agencies is under question or attack. There is no inconsistency or hypocrisy involved in the committees serving as agencies’ “best friends and severest critics.” Committee members believe that they have a better and more complete understanding of the agencies they oversee. Also, if the agencies they oversee lose power, then the committees also lose power.
This dynamic, which is inherent in the committee system that dominates Congress, was in evidence during the drafting of and debate over the 2004 intelligence legislation. The Senate was initially more responsive to calls to accept the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but jurisdiction over the legislation went to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee (SGAC), not the Senate Intelligence Committee. This could be rationalized in terms of jurisdiction, as the SGAC oversees government organization. However, in the past, bills of this sort had gone to the intelligence committee. Thus, the Senate leadership did not display much confidence in the intelligence committee for reasons that are not entirely clear. (Some believe the Senate leadership and perhaps the administration were concerned about the possible outcome as the Senate Intelligence chairman, Pat Roberts, had independently issued his own plan for intelligence reorganization that was widely seen as too radical.) In the House, the House Intelligence Committee was given jurisdiction. But friction arose with the House Armed Services Committee when Chairman Duncan Hunter. R-Calif., raised questions about the military’s access to intelligence and the chain of command. There was a certain disingenuous aspect to this debate. Hunter made public a letter from Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stating concerns of the type that Hunter voiced, but Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said he had no advance knowledge of the general’s action. Sen. John W. Warner. R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was supportive of Hunter but let him do most of the arguing. In the end, a DNI was created, but the secretary of defense lost little if any authority over the intelligence budget or over defense intelligence agencies. As a result, the two armed services committees had not lost any jurisdiction either.
The creation of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel in the House also raised jurisdiction issues. As has been noted, the relationship between authorizers and appropriators is not always smooth, with the appropriators being more powerful and more protective of their prerogatives. (Some sense of the power of the Appropriations Committee can be derived from its nickname in the House: “the college of cardinals.”) Therefore, the appropriators are unlikely to be willing to give authorizers greater insight into their deliberations. The SIOP serves more as a conduit for a small number of authorizers (three of