Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [170]
Finally, even intelligence has partisans who appear in the guise of lobbyists. Some groups are made up of former intelligence community employees, and some advocate strong stances and spending on national security. Groups have been formed that oppose certain aspects of intelligence, usually covert action, as well as some aspects of espionage; that are concerned about U.S. policy in every region of the world; and that would prefer to see some portion of the funds devoted to intelligence spent elsewhere. In the aftermath of 9/11, a faction offamilies who lost relatives in that attack became a powerful lobby in favor of the legislation creating a DNI, an issue in which their inputs were understandably more emotional than analytical. Finally, there is a group made up of firms that derive large amounts of their income from the work they do for the intelligence community. All of these groups are legitimate within the U.S. political system and must be taken into account when considering how Congress oversees intelligence.
COMPETITION WITHIN THE CONGRESSIONAL AGENDA. A series of debates influencing intelligence oversight recur in every Congress, with varying degrees of strength. One is the debate between domestic and national security concerns, which is especially important when dealing with the budget. During the cold war, national security rarely suffered. In the post-cold war period, with national security concerns more difficult to define, the intelligence community had difficulty—until the terrorist attacks in 2001—maintaining level spending, let alone winning increases.
Another debate is that between civil liberties and national security. The debate is almost as old as the republic, dating back to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Other instances of civil liberties clashing with national security concerns predate the advent of the intelligence community: President Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the arrest of antiwar dissidents during World War 1, the mass arrests and detention of Japanese Americans during World War 11, and acts aimed at rooting out communist subversion during the cold war. In each case, political leaders cited national emergencies to place temporary limitations on civil liberties. This debate resumed in 2001 in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, as the Bush administration sought increased powers for surveillance, nonjudicial trials (the proposed use of military tribunals), and other types of authority.
The precedents notwithstanding, the intelligence investigations of the mid-1970s revealed several instances in which intelligence agencies violated constitutional guarantees, laws, and their own charters. The violations included surveillance of dissident groups, illegal mail openings, illegal wiretaps of U.S. citizens, and improper use of the Internal Revenue Service. Some of these actions were known by the president at the time; some were not. The revelation of these activities underscored concerns about the ability of secret agencies to act without safeguards and the need for strong executive and congressional oversight. As noted, this is the area in which the Civil Liberties Protection board is supposed to be active.
A third perennial congressional debate focuses on the level and range of U.S. activism abroad. From World War I through the cold war, the Democrats were largely the interventionist party: and the Republicans, the noninterventionist party. During World War II and the cold war, an interventionist consensus formed, although a Republican faction remained noninterventionist. The damage that the Vietnam War inflicted on the cold war consensus fostered a shift in the positions of the two parties. The Democrats largely became the noninterventionist party and the Republicans became