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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an independent US Government agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior US policymakers.

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CIA and the Congress

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 CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
 RELEASE IN FULL
 22 SEPT 93
         
         
        

  CONFIDENTIAL  

         
To be a politician is but to feign ignorance of what you know well, pretend knowledge of what you are totally ignorant, decline to listen to what you hear, attempt what is beyond your capacity, hide what ought to be exposed, appear profound when you are dull-wined, and to justify ignoble means by claiming admirable ends. Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Marriage of Figaro (1778 )      
     
         
   

CIA AND THE CONGRESS

  
   

John M. Maury

  
         
Beaumarchais' appraisal of politicians is widely shared these days, and perhaps nowhere more than among members of Executive Agencies who have come to look upon Congressmen and their endless investigations and criticisms as irreconcilable enemies of the bureaucratic establishment. In the case of agencies involved in sensitive questions of national security, the problem is intensified by concern among the bureaucrats that Congress will, perhaps inadvertently, lack proper discretion in the handling of highly classified material to which it demands access. On the other hand, the Congress instinctively suspects that whenever an Executive Agency pleads national security as an excuse for withholding information, the purpose is merely to cover up mischief or inefficiency.
         
In the case of an agency involved in foreign intelligence, the problem is further complicated by traditional American squeamishness about the morality of spying in peacetime-reading other people's mail, or subverting other people's loyalties. And sometimes our own poor judgment or clumsy tradecraft have contributed to Congressional suspicions that many of our activities are counterproductive or create unnecessary irritants in the nation's foreign relations.
         
Our problem then is whether an organization like CIA can operate in American society without being so open as to be professionally ineffective, or so secret as to be politically unacceptable.
         
In the early days of the Agency this problem rarely arose. The Agency was created at a time when the nation was haunted by the disastrous lack of warning of the Pearl Harbor attack, when we were becoming dimly aware of the nature and scope of the post-war Soviet threat and implications of the Cold War, and when, for the first time in our history, we found ourselves with no staunch and strong ally standing between us and a possible major adversary. All of this, coupled with our worldwide security commitments-military, economic, and political-made it obvious that if we were to bear our newly acquired responsibilities in the world and defend our national interests, we would need a far more sophisticated set of eyes and ears abroad than anything we had enjoyed in the past.
         
In the view of the general public, and of the Congress which in the main reflected the public attitude, a national intelligence service in those days was
         
  CONFIDENTIAL  

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Posted: May 08, 2007 08:41 AM
Last Updated: May 08, 2007 08:41 AM
Last Reviewed: May 08, 2007 08:41 AM