[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Congress Looks the Other Way

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Congress Looks the Other Way

August 16, 2004
 


 

As the Senate prepares to consider President Bush's new
nominee for director of central intelligence, here's a
question for the senators: How can Representative Porter
Goss tackle the inefficient, overlapping structure of
American intelligence gathering when he's been part of the
problem when it comes to the inefficient, overlapping
structure of Congressional oversight? 

Mr. Goss is the chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee - one of the competing patches in the crazy quilt
of at least 17 committees that have made a disaster of
Congress's responsibility to oversee the government's
intelligence operations. Like other chairmen, Mr. Goss is
remembered for fiercely protecting his committee against
competing panels - the very problem the 9/11 commission
cited in warning that Congress had to end its hydra-headed,
self-indulgent committee system if the nation's security
ills are to be promptly faced. 

We'd like to see the senators - who are showing zero
appetite for addressing the problem - ask Mr. Goss what his
recommendations are for streamlining the committee
structure he knows so well. We'd also like to see whether
Mr. Goss has the courage to tell the self-interested
senators the truth. It would be an excellent test of
whether he's got the spine to stand up to top White House
officials on questions of intelligence estimates. 

The 9/11 commission recommended creating either a single
joint intelligence committee of the two houses or two
stand-alone committees consolidating oversight and spending
responsibilities. Ominously, the evidence so far at the
flurry of midsummer hearings prompted by the 9/11 findings
is that no one has any intention of doing anything. 

For all the urgent talk and photo-op handshakes, Congress
remains addicted to protecting the turf and patronage of
the status quo. There is a long history of failure on this
count. The recommendation for a more focused and powerful
Senate-House intelligence panel has been around for 50
years with nary a sign of interest from lawmakers busy
defending their pieces of the oversight pie - an estimated
$40 billion in annual intelligence spending. 

The notion that there could be some greater good than
Balkanized power wielding remains a non-starter in the
House. And in the Senate, the 9/11 panel's plea to repair
Congress was quickly hustled out of the spotlight for
consideration by a "working group" of lawmakers to be heard
from later. Such old back-room ways won't do in the era of
daily terror warnings. 

"Fix that first,'' John Lehman, a 9/11 panel member,
bluntly declared at one of the current hearings as he told
Congress of its own oversight failure. So far, despite
daily warnings of fresh danger, there is no sign of
Congress healing itself. Now, as the G.O.P. majority
leaders attempt to fight the war on terror by extolling the
merits of Mr. Goss, the public should be asking when they
will get around to cleaning up their own backyard. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/opinion/16mon1.html?ex=1093678228&ei=1&en=7bccd367961fa3fd


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