Seperate and dysfunctional

The intelligence community is gobbling up everything these days, and it’s doing it effectively without any oversight.

Tuesday morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of illegally searching a Senate computer system.
While the committee, which is charged with overseeing the intelligence community of the executive branch, was investigating the controversial interrogation tactics of the CIA, a special facility was set up in Virginia for staffers to look over agency documents.

One day, staffers got their hands on a document they shouldn’t have seen.

They shouldn’t have seen it because it was an internal document that was more critical than the CIA was willing to admit publicly, and it was covered by executive privilege. After the CIA realized the document had been viewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, it conducted a secret audit of a Senate computer system to determine how it happened.

Feinstein claims this search represents a violation of the separation of powers, but she has it backward. This issue isn’t a violation of that separation — it’s a symptom of separation gone too far.

The CIA argues it was authorized to conduct its audit because the document in question was covered by executive privilege, and the Senate had no right to know of its existence, let alone read it. That’s a problem. If the Senate committee is charged with overseeing the CIA and other intelligence organizations, those organizations shouldn’t be cherry-picking what their overseer gets to see.

Far from a safeguard against tyrannical government, the separation of powers has slowly mutated into an excuse for overreach. The Senate can’t adequately oversee the intelligence community because the intelligence community exists significantly outside its sphere of power. We’re taught that this system protects us from the overreach of government, that our many branches balance each other by their very nature.

What we’ve ended up with, though, is far from balanced. Today we have the very overreach we claim we’re so effectively safeguarded against.

Separation of powers is why John Brennan, the director of the CIA, can claim the audit was perfectly legal. Even more scandalously, it’s why James Clapper, the director of the NSA, can lie about his organization’s illegal activities in multiple sessions before Congress and keep his job.

The White House has defended Clapper, saying Barack Obama has “full faith in Director Clapper’s leadership of the intelligence community.” 

Any effective oversight committee would have chucked Clapper out of Washington already. The fact that Congress can’t isn’t a reason to venerate our system of government. It’s a reason to criticize it.

drlreed@indiana.edu