The past is prologue to the Trump administration.
Thirty years ago, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Attorney General Nominee William Barr were fighting congressional oversight of the CIA. As legal advisers to President Reagan, they insisted that the president did not need to disclose all covert operations to Congress, that Congress’s power of the purse did not extend to the CIA’s contingency fund, and that the president has “virtually unfettered discretion” in foreign policy.
The undemocratic tendencies of Barr and Bolton are documented in a new posting from the non-profit National Security Archive in Washington. Bolton and Barr undermined the system of congressional intelligence oversight with results that are evident today
CIA director Gina Haspel initially felt free to not inform Congress of the agency’s conclusions about the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. During the Bush administration, the CIA kept Congress in the dark about the details of its torture and black site programs
Historians John Prados and Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi explain what it means for U.S. policy today.
These kinds of information and notification issues are at the heart of congressional overseers’ ability to monitor the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The Executive—the White House, the CIA, other federal agencies—gained much of that leeway at an unlikely time, at the height of the Iran-Contra Affair from 1986 to 1992, when the CIA was clearly in breach of agreed procedures and reforms were patently necessary.
Which makes you wonder: are Barr and Bolton withholding notification of covert operations today, in say, Venezuela?
