Amy Zegart examines the weaknesses of US intelligence oversight and why those deficiencies have persisted, despite the unprecedented importance of intelligence in today's environment. She argues that many of the biggest oversight problems lie with Congress—the institution, not the parties or personalities—showing how Congress has collectively and persistently tied its own hands in overseeing intelligence.
Contents: (1) Intro.; (2) House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence; (3) Joint Committee on Atomic Energy as a Model; (4) Proposed Joint Committee on Intelligence Characteristics: Methods of Establishment; Jurisdiction and Authority; Membership; Terms and Rotation; Leadership; Secrecy Controls; Pros and Cons; (5) Alternatives to a Joint Committee: Changing the Select Committees¿ Structure and Powers; Concerns about Restructuring the Intelligence Committees; Constraints on Coordination; Increasing the Use of Congressional Support Agencies; (6) Observations on Oversight of Intelligence: Obstacles to Oversight: Secrecy Constraints. This is a print on demand edition of an important, hard-to-find publication.
Congress today is falling short. Fewer bills, worse oversight, and more dysfunction. But why? In a new volume of essays, the contributors investigate an underappreciated reason Congress is struggling: it doesn’t have the internal capacity to do what our constitutional system requires of it. Leading scholars chronicle the institutional decline of Congress and the decades-long neglect of its own internal investments in the knowledge and expertise necessary to perform as a first-rate legislature. Today’s legislators and congressional committees have fewer—and less expert and experienced—staff than the executive branch or K Street. This leaves them at the mercy of lobbyists and the administrative bureaucracy. The essays in Congress Overwhelmed assess Congress’s declining capacity and explore ways to upgrade it. Some provide broad historical scope. Others evaluate the current decay and investigate how Congress manages despite the obstacles. Collectively, they undertake the most comprehensive, sophisticated appraisal of congressional capacity to date, and they offer a new analytical frame for thinking about—and improving—our underperforming first branch of government.
This volume examines the ethical issues that arise as a result of national security intelligence collection and analysis. Powerful new technologies enable the collection, communication and analysis of national security data on an unprecedented scale. Data collection now plays a central role in intelligence practice, yet this development raises a host of ethical and national security problems, such as privacy; autonomy; threats to national security and democracy by foreign states; and accountability for liberal democracies. This volume provides a comprehensive set of in-depth ethical analyses of these problems by combining contributions from both ethics scholars and intelligence practitioners. It provides the reader with a practical understanding of relevant operations, the issues that they raise and analysis of how responses to these issues can be informed by a commitment to liberal democratic values. This combination of perspectives is crucial in providing an informed appreciation of ethical challenges that is also grounded in the realities of the practice of intelligence. This book will be of great interest to all students of intelligence studies, ethics, security studies, foreign policy and international relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Congressional oversight activity has increased dramatically since the early 1970s. Congressional committees now spend more of their time holding hearings to review the activities of federal agencies, and committee staff members are busy collecting information about what goes on during program implementation. This book examines the reasons behind the surprising growth of congressional oversight. Using original data collected for this project, Joel D. Aberbach documents the increase in oversight activity and links it to changes in the political environment. He explores the political purposes served by oversight, the techniques Congress uses to uncover information about the activities of the federal bureaucracy, and the reasons why topics get on the oversight agenda. He concludes that even though the U.S. government system was not designed with a large administrative sector in mind, its ability to expose bureaucratic behavior to public scrutiny is impressive, and the Congress plays a vital role in this endeavor.
This study offers the first detailed examination of the varied means by which parliament through its committees and the work of individual members has sought to scrutinise the British intelligence and security agencies and the government's use of intelligence.
The documents contained within this updated edition incorporate all amendments since the release of Winter 2012 version through February 26, 2016 and verified against the United States Code maintained by the United States Library of Congress and Westlaw private company. The documents cited in this volume range from principles of professional ethics and transparency for the Intelligence Community, several Acts including the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 that includes information sharing, privacy, and civil liberties, and security clearances, plus Counterintelligence and Security Enhancements Act of 1994, Classified Information Procedures Act, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, Cybersecurity Act of 2015, numerous executive orders, presidential policy directives, and more. American citizens, law enforcement, especially U.S. Federal agency personnel that engage with intelligence surveillance, classified information, and national security efforts may be interested in this updated edition. Additionally, attorneys, civil servants involved within information technology departments, and records management may also be interested in this resource. Students pursuing courses in the areas of Ethics in Criminal Justice, Computer Forensics, Criminal Law in Criminal Justice, Homeland Security and Terrorism, Information Storage and Retrieval, Computer Security, or Military Science may be interested in this reference for research. Lastly, public, special, and academic libraries may want this legal reference available for their patrons. Related products: Intelligence Community Legal Reference Book, Winter 2012 - Limited quantities while supplies last - can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/041-015-00278-3 Intelligence and Espionage resources collection is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/security-defense-law-enforcement/intelligence-espionage Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice topical books can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/security-defense-law-enforcement/law-enforcement-criminal-justice Mail & Communications Security collection is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/security-defense-law-enforcement/mail-communications-security
