Can Congress Keep a Secret?

The furor in Congress over the mining of Nicaraguan harbors highlights a question of overwhelming importance: Is Congress capable of practicing responsible oversight of intelligence activities, once those activities are viewed as an integral part of a foreign policy that has become the subject of partisan political debate?

The current situation derives, ultimately, from the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate. Panels headed by then-Congressman Otis Pike and the late Senator Frank Church carried out extensive investigations of U.S. intelligence activities in the mid-Seventies; in the wake of these investigations, both Houses of Congress decided to establish select committees on intelligence. For a while, both of these committees appeared to conduct their business in an amicable and bipartisan manner with little evidence of politicization. Unfortunately, that state of affairs was too good to last, and for the past two years or so, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in particular, has become radically politicized. So much so, in fact, that one of the intelligence community’s most illustrious and respected alumni, retired Admiral Bobby Inman, resigned in 1982 as a consultant to the committee because he felt it had become politically partisan. Inman, a former director of the National Security Agency and deputy director of Central Intelligence, explained that the oversight committees must be nonpolitical to earn public credibility. “If the country doesn’t establish a bipartisan approach to intelligence, we are not going to face the problems of the next fifty years,” he added.

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Henry J. Hyde

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The furor in Congress over the mining of Nicaraguan harbors highlights a question of overwhelming importance: Is Congress capable of practicing responsible oversight of intelligence activities, once those activities are viewed as an integral part of a foreign policy that has become the subject of partisan political debate?

The current situation derives, ultimately, from the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate. Panels headed by then-Congressman Otis Pike and the late Senator Frank Church carried out extensive investigations of U.S. intelligence activities in the mid-Seventies; in the wake of these investigations, both Houses of Congress decided to establish select committees on intelligence. For a while, both of these committees appeared to conduct their business in an amicable and bipartisan manner with little evidence of politicization. Unfortunately, that state of affairs was too good to last, and for the past two years or so, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in particular, has become radically politicized. So much so, in fact, that one of the intelligence community’s most illustrious and respected alumni, retired Admiral Bobby Inman, resigned in 1982 as a consultant to the committee because he felt it had become politically partisan. Inman, a former director of the National Security Agency and deputy director of Central Intelligence, explained that the oversight committees must be nonpolitical to earn public credibility. “If the country doesn’t establish a bipartisan approach to intelligence, we are not going to face the problems of the next fifty years,” he added.