The NSA Needs to get some Religion in the Form of Congressional Oversight
The executive branch is conducting expansive domestic and global surveillance
operations, unprecedented in scope and means, to collect and analyze information and
communications of millions of people. These operations have raised serious questions about
whether these activities are necessary, proportionate, and legal.
Given that neither Members of Congress nor the public were not — and still are not —
adequately informed about these programs, Congress should form a special joint investigatory
committee to conduct a full investigation and issue recommendations.
Americans have confronted these issues before. Today’s Congress should learn from
historical examples and form a new investigatory committee modeled after notable and relevant
past successes.
In the early 1970s, the public and Congress learned that the CIA was collecting millions
of Americans’ communications. In response, Congress created the Church Committee as a
special investigatory committee and adopted a bipartisan approach to independently investigate
activities conducted by both Democratic and Republican administrations. The Church
Committee also formed a cooperative relationship with the intelligence community to access
relevant information, while undertaking rigorous scrutiny of intelligence programs and
maintaining the objectivity and credibility to assess them.
The investigation is still considered one of the most successful in U.S. history. It
provided a significant accounting of the executive’s activities, led to meaningful reforms that
governed surveillance law for more than three decades, and restored public confidence that
Congress was conducting its constitutional oversight role.
The Church Committee demonstrated that a special investigatory committee can, with
political will and good leadership, effectively investigate executive surveillance and intelligence
activities—and their abuses.
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