NEW ERA OF MISTRUST MARKS CONGRESS' ROLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303560070-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 1, 2010
• Sequence Number: 70
• Publication Date: May 19, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/01 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000303560070-9
WASHINGTON POST
19 May 1986
THE CIA IN TRANSITION
New Era of Mistrust
Marks Congress' Role
By David B. Ottaway
and Patrick K Tyler
wastroatas Pmt stag Wfltas
Ten years ago today, 72 senators
voted to assert a stronger role for
Congress in overseeing the vast
U.S. intelligence apparatus in the
'wake of painful disclosures, scandals
and abuses at the Central Intelli-
gence Agency and the collection of
secretive federal agencies known as
the U.S. intelligence "community."
The hope was to end an era of
suspicion, to narrow the number of
congressional committees that had
jurisdiction over the intelligence
budget, to cut down on leaks of clas-
sified information and to set up a
strong, permanent monitoring body
to restore integrity and confidence
in America's intelligence-gathering
capabilities.
But after a decade, a new era of
mistrust has dawned.
The Reagan administration is
virtually at war with the two com-
mittees that were established to
oversee the U.S. intelligence arm.
Each side has accused the other of
endangering the nation's most sen-
sitive intelligence systems and jeop-
ardizing covert operations in the
Third World through unauthorized
leaks to the news media.
Sen. David F. Durenberger (R-
Minn.), chairman of the Select
Committee on Intelligence, said in
an interview for this article that "a
lot of those people [in the admin-
istration] don't want oversight." He
charged that the administration has
"screwed up" its covert attempt to
change the Marxist government in
Nicaragua and that every one of the
CIA's covert paramilitary opera-
tions "is a problem."
In addition, Durenberger as-
serted that special interest groups
and "right-wing senators" have been
driving the administration's secret
diplomacy in Afghanistan and An-
gola; that Secretary of State
George P. Shultz has allowed him-
self to be intimidated by these
groups while CIA Director William
J. Casey has shown a hypersensi-
tivity to criticism. Durenberger said
his own well-publicized marital
troubles have been spotlighted by
conservative Reagan supporters as
a-means of attacking his credibility
as Senate oversight chairman.
The feud has grown so acrimo-
nious that administration officials
are suggesting it could soon endan-
ger the future of the oversight pro-
cess. Already, some top officials are
charging that oversight is out of
control. A few have suggested pri-
vately that the House and Senate
intelligence panels be abolished and
their responsibilities consolidated in
one tightly controlled joint commit-
tee.
President Reagan, in a classified
letter to Durenberger, warned a
few months ago that the oversight
process was seriously "at risk" and
blamed Congress for a hemorrhage
of national security data to the news
media.
The Senate oversight leadership
in turn has charged that the Reagan
administration has systematically
disclosed highly classified intelli-
gence information to influence pub-
lic debate and to bully Congress
into supporting its overseas adven-
tures.
At the core of the dispute are the
fit deeper divisions between Con-
gl~eess and the White House over
wheat has emerged as a key feature
of the administration's foreign pol-
icy-the so-called Reagan Doc-
trine, which by nature is carried out
behind a cloak of secrecy provided
by the CIA.
The doctrine has never been de-
fined by Reagan personally and its
outline has been most extensively
shaped by the conservative cadres
that seek to frame the Reagan for-
eign policy agenda. But if Reagan
has no
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rogates
any t'
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train
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#ovide them with battlefield Intel-
6gence. As the fighting has steadily
.escalated in Afghanistan, Cambodia,
Nicaragua and now Angola, ques-
tions in Congress have grown
steadily louder.
The president is now seeking
$100 million in new aid for counter-
revolutionary, or contra, guerrillas
in Nicaragua. The CIA is involved in
operations to destabilize Libyan
leader Muammar Qaddafi and in
low-level support to antigovern-
ment paramilitary forces in Ethio-
pia, according to intelligence
sources.
The administration's attack on
oversight, according to congres.
sional leaders, must be weighed
against the phenomenal budgetary
support the congressional oversight
committees have marshalled for the
intelligence community. The intel-
ligence budget of about $10 billion
in 1979 has more than doubled to
$24 billion this year and is projected
to triple by 1990. This support has
allowed the Carter and Reagan ad-
ministrations to rapidly build up the
most sophisticated, high-technology
intelligence apparatus in the world.
Still, the frustrations are deep
and bitter in this "partnership,"
largely because the intelligence
buildup has restored a formidable
and lethal capability in the CIA's
directorate of operations to mount
covert paramilitary operations over
which Congress has little control. It
was inevitable, according to some
senators, that once the CIA had this
capability, it would find new "oppor-
tunities" to justify using its most
controversial instrument.
The president is required to send
only a secret notification to the in-
telligence oversight committees
that such operations are under way.
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