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and most difficult, with the president’s office – the formulation, which, I think, pertains
even now, under the great stresses of the war on terrorism, is that no decision affecting
the security of the United States should be left to one person. The president should not be
given that responsibility, that such decisions had to be a shared responsibility despite the
obvious difficulties – sharing knowledge, even dangerous knowledge, with the legislature
and the courts. I was very pleased to see the decision of the New York federal court,
which ruled that it is unconstitutional to hold American citizens prisoner without recourse
to available protections in the court.
Q: It really hearkens back to the internment of the Americans of Japanese ancestry, too.
MILLER: Of course, that was a case that I worked with Senator Inouye on. Inouye was
the first Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Inouye, many of
whose relatives and friends were in prison while he was off fighting the second World
War in Italy, losing an arm – I understood his feelings very deeply. I was delighted by the
recent comments of Nina Totenberg on this constitutional case, I think her analysis was
absolutely first rate, and such a tribute to the professional quality of NPR (National Public
Radio) reporting.
Q: National Public Radio, yes.
MILLER: NPR is a tremendous asset. Well, in 1976, aside from the constitutional
understanding about the nature of secrecy and constitutional government – namely, that it
had to be shared among the three branches in an appropriate way – the outcome that
affected me directly was the creation of the permanent oversight committee. I was asked
to help put together a permanent oversight committee in the Senate, that would address
the issues of oversight of intelligence activities, and to head the staff of the committee.
That involved drawing up the charter and the committee rules, hiring the staff and
beginning the process of regular and routine contacts with the intelligence agencies,
preparation of budgets for approval, and the monitoring of all of their activities on a
periodic basis. The formulas that we worked out were: first, to have a nonpartisan staff –
I’m sorry to say that’s no longer the case – that all decisions should be made by both
parties on a nonpartisan basis to the extent that was possible. There should be a unitary
staff, and the highest levels of knowledge and promptness should be the reasons for hiring
staff.
The establishment of a permanent standing committee for the oversight of intelligence
went quite well, because there was a spirit in the Senate at this point that this was a very
good idea, that the investigations had come out far better than anyone had hoped, and that
the intelligence agencies and the president were fully cooperative about the enterprise. So
the procedures were set up for the sharing of information, the review of programs, and the
analyses of budget and regular oversight activities, including visits to field sites and
review of extensive operations, whether successes or failures.
As an organizational matter, this was a very big job. There was a lot of money involved,
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