Dems Proposing Bad Covert Ops Oversight Rules to Make Leaking Easier
The point behind this move is to deter the executive branch from using overt ops in the first place, which suits the objectives of members of Congress philosophically opposed to the IC and historic US foreign policy, but it does not actually *improve* Congressional oversight of the IC. The recent and future loud charges by House Democrats against the CIA are designed to justify this quiet power grab.
These proposed changes are designed to create a situation of arbitrary, conflict-ridden, uncertain yet expanded oversight of covert operations as the House and Senate Committees are likely to write different rules for their members and to disagree on breadth of notification. More people would have knowledge of very sensitive operations (we have to add staffers and key aides told by MoC against disclosure rules) with far less of the accountability for leaks by keeping notification to the “gang of eight”.
It will be much easier for any one member to kill any operation they disapprove of by leaking it with little fear of being caught and needing to make a political defense of their position on the covert operation. Even if a member of Congress is identified as having leaked information about a secret intelligence operation, the chances of being disciplined by the House or Senate are minimal unless the member is highly unpopular with their own party leaders or is enmeshed in another scandal and, thus, disposable. Forget being prosecuted, that will never happen.
No good intentions here, which is why this change was shrouded in committee obscurity by liberal Democratic House leaders rather than shouted by them at a high profile press conference.
Hat tip to AnalyticType.
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Seerov:
July 13th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Perhaps the intent here is alleviate the fears of Obama’s friends in South America?
T. Greer:
July 14th, 2009 at 12:05 am
…. Dems Proposing Bad Covert Ops Oversight Rules to Make Leaking Easier 12 July 2009. Mark Sanfranski. Zenpundit. Senate Democrats are trying to make the jobs of our special operatives much, much harder. I hope this can be shot down before it gets out of hand…….
Michael:
July 14th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Normally I’m all for crowd-ing a problem, but the current involvement of Congress in intel matters is woeful already, adding more woe won’t help (assuming a purely altruistic motivation, which of course is nonsense). If they were concerned about oversight they would allow the GAO to go nuts on the IC, but they don’t, so they’re not.
zen:
July 14th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Agree with everyone. This is mostly a partisan effort – actually the most unreasonable faction of the Democratic Party – abetted by the generic egomania and desire for power without accountability native to all politicians. It is a bad rule regardless of which party runs the show.