Intelligence oversight is broken

Whatever else one might say about America's accident-prone intelligence agencies, it seems clear that the system of congressional oversight that was established in the mid 1970s to supervise them isn't working.

Right now, we are getting the worst possible mix - a dearth of adequate congressional scrutiny on the front end that could improve performance and check abuses, and a flood of second guessing at the back end, after each flap, that further demoralizes and enfeebles the spies. Congress silently blesses the CIA's harsh interrogation tactics, for example, and then denounces the practices when they become public.

It's supposed to be the other way around: When the Senate and House intelligence committees were created in 1975 after the exposure of wrongdoing, the premise was that Congress would provide an independent but discreet arm of accountability. Elected officials were to be briefed on the dirty business, with the understanding that they would maintain the same bonds of secrecy as the intelligence community itself.

The intelligence committees were meant to be bipartisan. And to avoid the usual congressional logrolling, they weren't permanent committees at first. Back then, the congressional leadership expected it would be difficult to get anyone to serve very long on the intelligence panels, because the members wouldn't be able to talk about what they did.

Congressional oversight of intelligence was a radical idea. Some experts questioned whether it was realistic to ask elected officials to sign off on the work of intelligence agencies - which, when you strip away all the high-minded language, basically involves the systematic violation of other countries' laws. Intelligence agencies steal other nations' secrets, bribe their officials into committing treason, intercept their most private conversations. And that's just the easy, noncontroversial stuff. We haven't gotten to interrogation techniques.

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The CIA makes too many mistakes. It is too cautious and bureaucratic. It tolerates too much mediocrity. But looking at the process of oversight - the retroactive blame game masquerading as accountability - is it any wonder that the CIA needs help? This process is broken, and the next administration should think creatively about how to fix it.