ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

CIA, Legal Restrictionhe uncovered evidence of a lengthy domestic intelligencecampaign involving interception of private mail. In theyears that followed, the public would learn that the agencyhad been involved in assassinations and attempted assassinations,conducted experiments using LSD and otherpsychotropic drugs, and lied to the public concerning thedevelopment of secret spy planes.New committees and executive orders. In response to thegrowing public distrust of the CIA, President Gerald R.Ford on January 4, 1975, signed Executive Order 11828,which created the Commission on CIA Activities, to bechaired by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. On January27, the Senate established its Select Committee to StudyGovernmental Operations with Respect to IntelligenceActivities, under the leadership of Frank Church (D-ID).The House of Representatives created its own Select Committeeon Intelligence, later chaired by Otis G. Pike (D-NY),on February 19.The Church Committee submitted its final report onApril 26, 1976. Meanwhile, on January 29, just two daysbefore the Pike Committee was to complete its investigation,the House voted not to make its findings public. (Thereport was eventually leaked to journalist Daniel Schorr,and published in the Village Voice.) The Church Committeehad already begun to have an impact, and as of May19, the Senate had put in place its permanent SelectCommittee on Intelligence. On July 14, 1977, the Houseestablished its own such committee.Ford signed Executive Order 11905, “United StatesForeign Intelligence Activities,” on February 18, 1976. Theorder established the Committee on Foreign Intelligenceand the Operations Advisory Group, which greatly increasedexecutive oversight of the CIA. The National SecurityCouncil (NSC), established at the same time as the CIA,also afforded this oversight, but in the NSC, the Director ofCentral Intelligence primarily acted in the capacity of anintelligence advisor, whereas the new committees extendedthe President’s involvement in CIA budget planningand resource allocation.President James E. Carter, on January 24, 1978, signedExecutive Order 12036, which changed the shape of theintelligence structure. Among its provisions was a restrictionof bugging and domestic surveillance activities, andguidelines whereby the CIA could request surveillanceauthorization through the Federal Bureau of Investigation.This order was superseded on December 4, 1981,by Executive Order 12333, in which President RonaldReagan further clarified legal oversight of the intelligencecommunity.Laws in the early 1980s. The effort to bring the CIA into linecontinued with a series of congressional acts in the early1980s, including the 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act. Theact replaced the armed services committees as the principalarm of legislative oversight for the CIA in both housesEncyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Securityof Congress. Thenceforth, the newly formed intelligencecommittees would take the lead, though the armed servicescommittees remain involved in monitoring intelligenceactivities, as did the foreign relations and foreignaffairs committees. At its end, the CIA maintains an Officeof Congressional Affairs, and provides more than a thousandbriefings to Congress, its committees, and theirstaffs, each year.In an effort to prevent the pendulum from swingingtoo far in the opposite direction, Congress passed theIntelligence Identities Protection Act. The act, which Reagansigned into law on June 23, 1982, made it a felony to revealthe names of covert intelligence personnel. On October15, 1984, Reagan signed the Central Intelligence AgencyInformation Act, which exempted the agency from thesearch and review requirements of the Freedom of InformationAct. (The latter, passed in 1967 and amended in1975, had further increased U.S. citizens’ protection againstdomestic intelligence operations by the CIA and othergroups.)Striking a balance. All issues of legal authority over the CIAwere not solved in the period from the mid-1970s to theearly 1980s, however. Still ahead lay the Iran-Contra debacle,which did not so much lead to new legislation as itfurther eroded the trust of lawmakers and the publictoward the CIA. As a result, by the early 1990s, the U.S.intelligence community found itself so restricted that itcould hardly conduct its operations. This fact hit homeafter the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when itbecame apparent that a lack of human intelligence hadcontributed to the government’s failure to foresee theattacks. However, the post-September, 2001 emphasis onsecurity portended a relaxation of restrictions on CIAactivity.❚ FURTHER READING:BOOKS:Legislative Oversight of Intelligence Activities: The U.S.Experience: Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office, 1994.Polmar, Norman, and Thomas B. Allen. Spy Book: TheEncyclopedia of Espionage. New York: Random House,1998.Richelson, Jeffrey T. The U.S. Intelligence Community,fourth edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999.PERIODICALS:Cannon, Carl M. “Central Intelligence Agency.” NationalJournal 33, no. 25 (June 23, 2001): 1903–1904.SEE ALSOCIA (United States Central Intelligence Agency)CIA, Formation and HistoryFOIA (Freedom of Information Act)HUMINT (Human Intelligence)Intelligence, United States Congressional Oversight ofIntelligence Authorization Acts, United States Congress203