Congress Has a Chequered History of Overseeing U.S. Intelligence and National Security
This quote isn’t entirely true. In research from 2023, I showed that Congress was more involved than was generally believed. The US-backed 1954 coup in Guatemala, which deposed the democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, is a case in point. Leading members of Congress were “in the know” and others pushed Dwight Eisenhower’s administration to be even more aggressive.
But Congress took on a more active role in intelligence matters in the 1970s. Following a series of public revelations about the CIA’s behavior, a select committee was established in 1975 and exposed abuses by intelligence agencies including the surveillance of US citizens, experiments with drugs and involvement in assassinations.
In the wake of this, Congress established intelligence committees with oversight duties. The idea was that the CIA would present a document signed by the president to notify congressional committees of its intentions.
However, the system ran into trouble in the 1980s, and partisanship and politicization were part of the story. The Ronald Reagan administration’s support for the “contra” rebels in Nicaragua made intelligence a matter of severe partisan conflict.
Removing Nicaragua’s Government
When Reagan took office in 1981, one of the primary foreign policy priorities for his administration was removing the Sandinista National Liberation Front from power in Nicaragua. The administration saw the Sandinistas as a threat to the region and – in Reagan’s black-and-white thinking – as puppets of Communist Moscow and Havana.
The administration sought to convince Congress that its aims were limited. The aim, or so CIA director William Casey told the intelligence committees, was to obstruct the transfer of weapons from Nicaragua to neighboring El Salvador. Another left-wing guerrilla movement, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, was threatening the US-supported government there.
Initially, the policy received bipartisan support in Congress. The linchpin of this policy was the creation of an insurgent group in Nicaragua called the contras (contrarevolucionarios). It was made up of members of the previous regime’s brutal national guard, as well as other groups that had become disgruntled with the Sandinistas.
News stories soon made clear that the size of the contra army had radically expanded, from the 500 members discussed by Casey in his initial briefing to thousands. The contras’ stated goal of overthrowing the Sandinistas, which they ultimately failed to do, also contradicted the earlier Reagan administration’s statements to Congress.
Democrats in Congress pushed the leadership of intelligence committees to curtail the administration’s activities. Edward Boland, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, penned and helped to pass two amendments. The first prohibited any US government support for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government.
When the administration found loopholes to circumvent this, Boland’s second amendment prohibited any US funds from being spent in support of the contras. This amendment is generally understood as a first step towards the so-called Iran-Contra scandal.
The Reagan administration illegally funded the contras behind Congress’s back by using the proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran – a state the US had been at loggerheads with since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The Boland amendments also helped make an intelligence and covert operations issue a matter of public debate and – more importantly – congressional votes. Republicans in Congress abandoned their oversight duties and followed the administration’s guidelines.
Votes on contra aid became an opportunity for partisan controversy, vitriolic attacks, accusations of betrayal and large-scale influence campaigns. Instead of oversight, a deep partisan divide materialized.
Counting on Congress? Think Again
The role of Congress is to conduct oversight. It is the role of the governing administration to keep Congress informed of intelligence matters, particularly covert operations. History shows this has often been hard to achieve.
Congress has been complacent, complicit and often too willing to follow the government’s lead. In some cases, Congress has acted but primarily in the aftermath of major scandals or media revelations. This is called “firefighting” behavior.
But “firefighters” seem to now be in short supply. As much as domestic constraints on Trump’s power are decreasing, the same is happening in the context of intelligence and foreign policy.
Luca Trenta is Associate Professor in International Relations, Swansea University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.
