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means or NTM (that is, a variety of satellites and other technical collectors) by both parties to collect needed intelligence, and they prohibited overt interference with national technical means. Furthermore, these agreements created the new issue of verification—the ability to ascertain whether treaty obligations were being met. (Monitoring, or keeping track of Soviet activities, had been under way since the inception of the intelligence community, even before arms control. Verification consists of judgments or evaluations based on monitoring.) U.S. intelligence was central to these activities, with new accusations by arms control advocates and opponents that intelligence was being politicized. Those concerned that the Soviets were cheating held that cheating was either being undetected or ignored. Arms control advocates argued that the Soviets were not cheating or, if they were, the cheating was minimal and therefore inconsequential, regardless of the terms of the agreements, and they maintained that some cheating was preferable to unchecked strategic competition. Either way, the intelligence community found itself to be a fundamental part of the debate.

INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATIONS (1975-1976). In the wake of revelations late in 1974 that the CIA had violated its charter by spying on U.S. citizens, a series of investigations examined the entire intelligence community. A panel chaired by Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller concluded that violations of law had occurred. Investigations by House and Senate special committees went deeper, discovering a much wider range of abuses.

Coming so soon after the Watergate scandal (which involved political sabotage and criminal cover-ups and culminated in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974) and the loss of the Vietnam War, these intelligence hearings further undermined the public’s faith in government institutions, in particular the intelligence community, which had been largely sacrosanct. Since these investigations, intelligence has never regained the latitude it once enjoyed and has had to learn to operate with much more openness and scrutiny. Also, Congress faced the fact of its own lax oversight. Both the Senate and the House created permanent intelligence oversight committees, which have taken on much more vigorous oversight of intelligence and, as mentioned earlier in the chapter, are now major taskers of intelligence themselves.

IRAN (1979). In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolution forced the shah of Iran from his throne and into exile. U.S. intelligence, in part because of policy decisions made by several administrations that severely limited collection, was largely blind to the growing likelihood of this turn of events. Successive administrations had restricted U.S. contacts with opposition groups lest the shah would be offended. In addition to these limits placed on collection, some intelligence analysts failed to grasp the severity of the threat to the shah once public demonstrations began. The intelligence community took much of the blame for the result despite the restrictions within which it had been working. Some people even saw the shah’s fall as the inevitable result of the 1953 coup that had restored him to power.

One ramification of the shah’s fall was the closure of two intelligence collection sites in northern Iran that the United States used to monitor Soviet missile tests, thus impairing the ability to monitor the SALT I agreement and the SALT II agreement then under negotiation.

IRAN-CONTRA (1986-1987). The administration of Ronald Reagan used proceeds from missile sales to Iran (which not only contradicted the administration’s own policy of not dealing with terrorists but also violated the law) to sustain the contras in Nicaragua fighting against the pro-Soviet Sandinista government—despite congressional restrictions on such aid. The Iran-contra affair provoked a constitutional crisis and congressional investigations. The affair highlighted a series of problems, including the limits of oversight in both the executive