http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/30/AR2007033002075_pf.htmlWhere's Congress In This Power Play?
By Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. and Aziz Huq
Sunday, April 1, 2007; B01
Thirty years ago, a Senate committee headed by the late Sen. Frank Church exposed widespread abuses by law enforcement and intelligence agencies dating to the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. In the name of "national security," the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency spied on politicians, protest groups and civil rights activists; illegally opened mail; and sponsored scores of covert operations abroad, many of which imperiled democracy in foreign countries.
The sheer magnitude of the abuses unearthed by the committee shocked the nation, led to broad reforms and embarrassed Congress, whose feckless oversight over decades was plain for all to see. As a result, Congress required presidents to report covert operations to permanent new intelligence committees and created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which squarely repudiated the idea of inherent executive power to spy on Americans without obtaining warrants. New guidelines were issued for FBI investigations.
For those of us involved in that effort to bring accountability and sunshine back to government, it is discouraging to read daily accounts of a new era of intelligence power abuses, growing out of a "war" on terrorism that is invoked to justify almost any secret measure.
In the past five years, we have learned that the executive branch has circumvented federal bans on torture, abandoned the Geneva Conventions, monitored Americans' phone conversations without the required warrants and "outsourced" torture through "extraordinary rendition" to several foreign governments. Recently we learned that the FBI recklessly abused its power to secure documents through emergency national security letters.
Once again, congressional oversight of the growing national security, intelligence and law enforcement establishments has fallen short. But there are now obstacles to reestablishing effective oversight that did not exist three decades ago.
For one thing, the country and Congress are far more polarized. There was a high degree of bipartisan unity on the Church Committee, and Republican President Gerald R. Ford generally cooperated in the effort to expose abuses and create remedies.
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We believe that most Americans still would agree with the Church Committee when it stated: "The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy," for "each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength that makes us free, is lessened."
