Word: oversight
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Walter Pforzheimer, who retired in 1974 as the CIA'S assistant general counsel, notes that from the time the agency was created in 1947, members were not required to answer any questions about operations-unless the questions were posed by the appropriate congressional oversight committee. When "outsiders" on other congressional committees asked troublesome questions, says Pforzheimer, CIA personnel referred them to the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services and Appropriations subcommittees, which had oversight duties. "I have never heard of a case where the director failed to answer the questions of our oversight committees," insists Pforzheimer...
...debate is far from over. The law requires that witnesses testify truthfully before congressional committees-but it does not require that Congressmen keep their mouths shut. Even when testifying before the congressional oversight committee, a CIA chief might be uneasy about blowing the cover of a current operation or exposing the methods and personnel of past projects. Despite the Helms case, drawing the line between an ultimate public accounting and a current operational imperative will always remain a difficult task for those who direct clandestine operations abroad...
...critical right of Congress to exercise meaningful oversight of the nation's intelligence community has sustained a serious--albeit hardly fatal--blow in the wake of the administration's decision on Helms, and only a very tenuous silver lining could be discerned as the air cleared in Washington. As part of the bargain with Justice Department officials, Helms agreed to testify fully in any subsequent investigations pertaining to the entire CIA episode in Allende's Chile...
...poor within our Nation." One of the obstacles noted was "division of responsibility and authority within Congress," i.e., whenever responsibility is unclearly divided it is avoided by all parties. What is implicit in the resolution and how it was handled was that the Agriculture Committee, which had legislative and oversight authority for federal food programs, had not done its job. This implicit fault was highlighted by the fact that the legislative committee that released S. Res. 281 was Labor and Public Welfare, not Agriculture, and by the fact that the subcommittee that investigated hunger in the summer...
...temptation to forgive Chabrol for this excess is formidable; the story deals with a depraved woman, and the humiliation meted out to her seems apt. But in so doing, the director irreparably damages the flow of the narrative, and the next transition only calls attention to his oversight. Realizing that he has abandoned the intrepid detectives in the mid-stream of their investigation, Chabrol suddenly thrusts them back into the picture as a not-so-subtle afterthought. The policemen somehow fasten onto the idea that the husband--long ago presumed to have been the victim of a murder they cannot...