Date: Mon, 10 Sep 90 15:10:20 199
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From: "Rich Winkel    UMC Math Department" <MATHRICH%UMCVMB.BITNET@UCHIMVS1.UCHICAGO.EDU>
...
Subject: more on covert ops bill

OVERT INACTION: EX-C.I.A. ANALYST TAKES A LOOK AT COVERT OPS BILL

By DAVID MACMICHAEL
The Nation, September 17, 1990, p. 261

[David MacMichael, a former C.I.A. estimates officer, is the
editor of Unclassified, the newsletter of the Association of
National Security Alumni.]

The Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991, recently passed by the
Senate, is supposed to clear up ambiguities in existing law concerning
covert intelligence operations and strengthen Congressional oversight.
Instead, the Senate version enshrines covert operations as a
legitimate and routine foreign policy tool, expands the President's
capacity to conduct them and gives unprecedented power to the military
and other executive-branch agencies to carry out their own covert
operations.

As though the Iran-contra scandal never happened and the revelations
over the years of dirty tricks and bonehead tactics by the Central
Intelligence Agency were all a bad dream, the Senate intelligence
committee, in its report accompanying the bill, concludes that
``Congress should expressly authorize covert action as a legitimate
foreign policy instrument.''  In pursuit
of this objective, the bill broadens the President's statutory
mandate to carry out covert actions.  He is permitted to order
not only those what he concludes are ``important to the national
security of the United States'' but also those that are
``necessary to support the foreign policy objectives of the
United States.''

The committee, chaired by David Boren, discussed the requirement under
present law that the President provide the House and Senate
intelligence committees with timely notices of covert actions, a
stricture that has been cavalierly ignored by Presidents in the past.
But rather than set a time limit for presidential notification, the
committee cites President Bush's letter to it dated October 30, 1989,
in which he promises he will try to notify the committees of a covert
operation in advance or at least ``within a few days'' of its
occurrence.  ``Any withholding beyond this period,'' Bush goes on,
``would be based on my assertion of the authorities granted this
office by the Constitution.''  This sweeping claim of executive
privilege was welcomed by the committee as a ``commitment.''

The commitment frequently defers to presidential prerogative.  For
example, in the matter of third-party or third-country funding of
operations prohibited by Congress, which was one of the major scandals
of the Iran-contra affair and which strikes directly at the
legislative branch's power of the purse, the Senate bill requires only
that the President report that off- budget funding is
``contemplated.''  The source of the funding need not be identified.
Should an intelligence committee dare to ask, the President may duck
the question by claiming executive privilege or by averring that to
provide the information would compromise intelligence sources or
methods.

The committee's report--the authoritative statement of Congressional
intent--asserts Congress's right to ``regulate'' covert operations,
but not to prohibit them.  Boren and company say that ``approval of
the intelligence committees is not a condition precedent to the
initiation of any intelligence activity.''  And any mention of
Congressional restraints is immediately qualified by a clause along
the lines of the following: ``This provision . . . should not be
construed as a limitation upon the power of the President to initiate
such activities in a matter consistent with his powers under the
Constitution.''

Since Congress cannot prohibit the initiation of an operation, how can
it dispute the President's finding that it is important to national
security or necessary to achieve a foreign policy objective?
Moreover, by making the support of a foreign policy objective a
criterion for covert activity and making it equal to the more weighty
national security criterion, the committee is all but saying that
achieving any objective by any means is permissible.  When Boren's
committee declares that ``covert operations are a necessary component
of our Nation's foreign policy'' and that they are ``compatible with
democratic government if they are conducted in an accountable manner
and in accordance with law,'' it mocks itself.  The law it has drawn
up all but eliminates what little accountability to Congress has
existed until now.  Boren and his committee have tossed the bitter
lessons of past abuses into the shredder.

The House intelligence committee, chaired by Anthony Beilenson, has
not yet reported its bill.  One hopes that it will repudiate the
travesty produced by the Senate.

[Unclassified is a bimonthly newsletter on covert operations
published by the Association of National Security Alumni. To
subscribe, send a $20 check or money order to Verne Lyon, 921
Pleasant Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50309.]