What Are The Pitfalls Of Judicial Oversight

Congressional oversight: oversight by congress of the executive branch. This relates to this unit because in this unit we learn about the many things congress is in charge of, and its many functions in government. In this unit we discuss the different powers congress has and what powers it doesn’t have. With congressional oversight, congress has many powers such as protecting civil liberties, preventing fraud and waste, making sure the executive branch complies with the law, etc. The power of congressional oversight is important to American government and politics because it is an implied power of congress, and the idea of checks and balances is important in this country. Congress has committees and has the right to check the executive branch to make sure everything is in

The intelligence community has undergone some major changes in the past thirty years. During the cold war this section of defense had massive funding. There needed to be an ability to predict what the Soviet Union was planning to do and what they were actually doing in order to prevent a nuclear war. After this period in time ended there was again large changes. The budget to the intelligence community was cut astronomically because there was perceived to be less of a threat to the United States (“9/11 Intelligence Failures Report”, 2002). This misperception was actually due to a lack of ability to shift to a new changing threat. This mind set allowed many unwelcomed risks to enter into the United States.

DNI Negroponte stated “The aim was to direct the required changes in intelligence practices but to accomplish that goal by empowering the intelligence agencies themselves to help lead the reform agenda.” Taking this approach Negroponte was able to mitigate the inherent weakness of his position by reaching out to the various agencies and getting them to advance his agenda. One of the ways he did this was by overhauling the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), the DNI “changed the process to ensure multiple intelligence agencies contributed to the PDB, which fostered collaboration, distributed the daily production burden, and encouraged agencies not accustomed to writing for the Oval Office to improve the quality of their product.” Moreover, Negroponte leveraged his direct access to the president in the PDB to continue to effect reform in the IC. “All of these meetings with the President reinforced and often drove the DNI’s intelligence reform

Congress has the power to make authorizations of funds for programs involving strategic intelligence. One way Congress ensures that budgets policies are being followed is through the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO is an independent agency that works for Congress and they investigate how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. Their mission is to support the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit for the American People. They provide timely information that is objective, fact-based, nonpartisan, nonideological, fair, and balanced. Audits made by the GAO are considered tools to be used to ensure policies for laws on budgets and appropriations of funds are

According to Rosenbach (2009), “Congressional oversight refers to the responsibility of the legislative branch to monitor and indirectly supervise federal programs, agencies, and policies. This authority is rooted in the Constitution’s “necessary and proper” clause and the

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks was among the agencies that associated the 9/11 attacks with lack of coordination among agencies (Best, 2015). This prompted the Congress to enact a legislation that established a centralized intelligence leadership, popular as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). However, the legislation only helped to increase tension between different agencies, especially on how to approach funding. The legislation was not clear regarding the boundaries between the activities of the DNI, and their interaction with the mainstream intelligence agencies. The congress debated these concerns and later established the framework for the working of the DNI and relationship with different intelligence agencies. Most importantly, this legislation focused on one element of reorganization, which was enhancing coordination of activities between different

Congressional oversight is a mechanism that delegates Congress the power to investigate the activities of executive agencies, in order to ensure there is no violation of legislative goals (Lowi (et al), 2014). This summary concluded some discussion of the oversight mechanism from three articles by Lowi (et al) (2014), McCubbins and Schwartz (1984) and Kingdon (1984), particular on the effectiveness and its influences on agenda-setting process.

Senator Church’s summary of the committee findings states: “There has been, in short, a clear and sustained failure by those responsible for controlling the intelligence community, and to ensure its accountability.”, (Fourth Amendment Framework, 2015, p. 164).

Issues pertaining to Intelligence oversight are intricate ; complicated at best and confusing at worst . By the virtue of its very nature , intelligence and open scrutiny do not mix although that is what Congress is mandated to do . Historically , the debate over Intelligence reform & oversight was a bloody uphill battle between the legislative & executive bodies . To further illustrate that point , a study that researched history of 58 of congressional record , titled “ US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

In 1974 when President Truman signed the National Security Act, which recognized the intelligence community and required congress be “fully informed”. In 1956 President D. Eisenhower establishes the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to counsel the White House on the quality and adequacy of intelligence. 1976 President Ford establishes the Intelligence Oversight Board to advise the President of the legality of intelligence activities. 1977 The House of Representatives establishes the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It was not intel 1991 that congress passed the Intelligence Authorization Act, requiring the President to inform congress in writing of all covert actions undertaken by the CIA. Then the attacks of 9/11 happened and in July 2004 the 9/11 Commission released a public report of approximately 40 suggested reforms, several of which were to improve Congressional oversight of intelligence activities. The committee also stated that congress was most responsible and their dysfunctional oversight of intelligence was always dependent on newspaper headlines. This leads to January 2007 when the House responds to the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations by establishing the House Appropriations Select Intelligence Oversight

Congress plays a vital role in strategic intelligence through the use of operational oversight and budget control, but this has become an issue of concern in recent years. Congressional intelligence committees uphold high decisions pertaining to every type of intelligence collection that exist, and was founded on the concept of no one person having absolute power. This is the concept that undergirds the importance of the oversight of national intelligence. Since the U.S. involvement in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Congress has not had a very robust congressional oversight on intelligence and left the decisions to that of the president and the intelligence agency governing important operational matters.

Terrorists widely violated immigration laws while in the United States. Even though the intelligence officials have gained information about terrorist attack, delayed organizational reforms prevent them to solve the crisis. Consequently, intelligence agencies were blamed because of organizational failure. Michel Delving gives some startling piece of news in his book The Devil Incarnate which described the event of September 11 attack. The report submitted by the House and Senate committee in June 2002 reveals the organizational failure of Bush administration. Analyzing various aspects of the 9/11 attacks, the committees still exposed a vast display of confirmation of failures by various security agencies like CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, another agencies that terminated in the terrorist’s achievement (Delving, 2006, p.79). Finally, problems in the FBI have created practical obstacles in the process of determining and preventing terrorist attacks. FBI and other intelligence agencies have introduced several strategies like counter terrorism included both criminal and intelligence investigations. Unfortunately, these strategies and techniques failed to strengthen security measures. Instead of that these techniques promote organizational crisis among the intelligence

Under the instructions of these laws, FBA and NSA launched several programs for surveilling suspected people, among those programs the most notorious one is PRISM. This program

High level policy makers are not only concerned with intelligence; they are constantly concerned with reelection. A policy maker who is identifying requirements could decide to focus resources on an issue that is less vital to the nation’s security in order to obtain information that will get them reelected. High level threats could be pushed to the side in order to address an issue that is not necessarily as vital but is a hot topic in news media, and public opinion. This would be followed down by the intelligence community and the more dangerous area or individual threat could be left unmonitored.

The United States (U.S) Intelligence community has come a long way since the revolutionary war. After winning independence from England, the U.S would not invest much into intelligence or foreign policy until the 20th century. Foreign policy was simply not a priority for our young nation, having an ocean on eastern and Western boarders of the country severely limited potential threats. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would be the first president since Washington to understand the importance of intelligence and lay the groundwork for what we now consider national intelligence. Unfortunately, it has taken two catastrophic failures in intelligence for the U.S to realize the need for good intelligence and take steps to improve itself. The