Hearings Before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence House of Representatives NinetyEighth Congress First Session, September 20, 21, 22, 1983 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Hearings Before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence House of Representatives: Ninety-Eighth Congress First Session, September 20, 21, 22, 1983

House of Representatives,

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,

Washington, D.C.

The permanent select committee met, pursuant to call, at 9 a.m., in room H-405, the Capitol, Hon. Edward P. Boland (chairman of the committee) presiding.

The Chairman. The committee will come to order.

Recently this committee for the first time in its 6-year history reached the stage of public disagreement with the President on the subject of a particular covert action operation. That disagreement continues, but we don't meet it today and won't try to resolve it today. Rather, our purpose is to explore a more basic structural question: What should be the role of Congress in the consideration, approval, or cancellation of covert operations?

Why does the committee raise these questions now? There are several reasons. First, the history of the committee's disagreement with the President to which I referred earlier points up the disadvantage that the Intelligence Oversight Committees have in dealing with covert action. They have no power to stop them except by refusal to fund them.

This power is usually only effective in the fiscal year after a particular covert action has begun. The President must approve covert actions. He must report them to the Intelligence Oversight Committees before they are implemented. Yet, he need not ask Congress for new funds at the time they begin.

The CIA, which performs U.S. covert actions, has contingency funds and statutory transfer authority which would permit all the fiscal flexibility that even a relatively expensive covert action requires. Some may say, "Oh, so what? The President is charged with accounting for foreign affairs. Covert action is an integral part of foreign policy. Congress can stop funding for policy with which it doesn't agree, but it shouldn't try to make policy."

We do not meet today to dispute the President's pre-eminence in foreign affairs, but right now Congress cant exercise much influence on covert actions because it cant stop covert actions from beginning, except by publicly exposing them. That forces the question I proposed earlier: Isn't there some way for Congress to be in on the takeoffs as well as the crash landings of covert actions?

For the next 3 days we will be getting testimony from some of those who have been close to these operations over the past years.

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