Of course, Dear Reader, most of the ‘leaks’ from ‘informed sources’ about the latest congressional intelligence [sic] oversight [sic] pas de deux are kin to ‘news’ leaks from Michael Jackson’s parrot. Ferrets are more likely to launch out of Wolf Blitzer’s beard determined to beat down John King into a frenzied pulp. And then gang together to shred King’s refrigerator-sized Wintel magic computer thing-a-majig. But if one plays the odds . . .
A couple summary points:
(a) CIA, the Rotary Club, the Walt Whitman and Mclean High School Marching Bands have all been trying to kill Al Qaeda senior leaders even before 9/11. That’s the point of Clinton’s half-assed cruise missile attack the wingnuts claimed was to er, wag his ‘dog.’ Many underscore all this today rightly as a reality check against mindless gossip trafficking that this 2009 disclosure was ‘targeting Al Qaeda leaders for assassination’. (Update: Yet, reports continue that this apparently is exactly what panicked Panetta. One must sometimes just shake one’s head. And you watch out, John King!).
(b) Congressional oversight needs to be re-invented. Congress has no one to blame but itself. They cravenly abandoned their hard won rights. Forget oversight 2001-2009. They couldn’t even get authorizations together. And pity the desk drawer that took all that abuse from Rockefeller as he (we are sure) manly slammed his unsent letters to Cheney. Those posturing now on the Hill (Dem and Repub alike) are guilty of gross dereliction of duty and step up only now amid the institutional dead. Treason of a kind.
We’ve had structural congressional oversight only for 29 years, 8 of them a trivial formality (2001-2009). So a third of the 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act’s lifetime is a bitter joke. The mechanisms and framework created in 1980 relied on political compromise, ‘comity’ (with a ‘t’) and a willingness to use ‘checks (cheques) and balances’ rather than ‘separation of power’ legal formalisms. Congress knew oversight was always a few missteps from institutional capture or worse. This broader understanding of how intelligence oversight would function between the branches is a major reason for the different ‘notice’ regimes for certain special activities, collection, etc. In the end, the creators of the 1980 Oversight Act knew that ‘law’ would never settle matters – but ‘cheques’.