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The Select Committees and How "Findings" Were Handled: 1976-80

After the two select committees were created in the mid-1970s, they were naturally considered "appropriate committees" to receive "timely notice" ofcovert actions under the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, thus increasing the num-ber of committees entitled to receive such notice to eight. From the Agency'sstandpoint, this was patently unworkable. Almost immediately, therefore, Agency officials began urging the select committees to repeal Hughes-Ryan and make themselves - their parent bodies had now given them exclusive jurisdiction over the Agency - the sole committees to receive notice of covert actions. Until this issue could be resolved, however, there were practical questions that had to be answered, which, until the select committees were created, the Agency had not tried to sort out with the other committees involved. Instead, the notifications made under Hughes-Ryan had been largely ad hoc, both interms of what was notified and how it was done.

How notice would be provided was the first issue DCI Turner addressedwith the new committees, first with the SSCI and later with the HPSCI, and the issue was resolved with little controversy. The DCI would advise the committees as soon as possible after a presidential finding had been signed. Subsequently he would brief the program to the full committee with representatives of the State Department and/or DoD present to answer questions. The committees would then be free to express their concerns to the DCI or the president with respect to the program but would not have a veto over it. In other words, the administration was free to move ahead regardless of the concerns expressed. Both committees emphasized, however, the importance of being notified before implementation of the program - or as SSCI Chairman Inouye put it, "before irrevocable actions are taken" - otherwise, their concerns may have little practical effect.

What was to be notified to the committees proved a more difficult problem. As the Church Committee's report had suggested, in years past the Agency had conducted hundreds of covert actions, most of which did not rise to the level of presidential approval or congressional consideration. Yet, under Hughes-Ryan, all covert actions were made subject to a presidential finding and reporting to Congress. Resolution of this issue did not occur until late 1978, however, after the two committees had come to appreciate the situation the law had created. As DDCI Frank Carlucci bluntly told the HPSCI in September, "As a practical matter, the CIA covert action capability was moribund as a consequence of Hughes-Ryan."

To resolve this dilemma, both committees agreed to the concept of "general," omnibus findings signed by the president to authorize routine, ongoing, low-risk activities undertaken for such broad, noncontroversial purposes as counterterrorism assistance to other governments or propaganda and political action activities to thwart the spread of communism. These kinds of findings would be accompanied by "Perspectives" that would set forth in detail the kinds of activities being authorized. Other kinds of covert action - involvinghigh-risk, large-resource commitments or the possibility of harm to the participants or embarrassment to the United States - would be the subject of "specific" findings.

Although many on the select committees agreed with the Agency that the list of committees receiving notice under Hughes-Ryan needed to be pareddown, this was a delicate proposition for the committees, still in their infancy, to take on. In 1980, however, an opportunity presented itself. While the SSCI's effort to enact "charters" legislation for the Intelligence Community had come to naught, one part of the proposed bill, establishing the obligations of intelligence agencies toward the two oversight committees was still under discussion with the Carter administration. In return for the administration's agreement to support the oversight provisions, the SSCI inserted into the new oversight bill essentially the same obligations created by the Hughes-Ryan Amendment: the requirement for the president to approve and give "timely notice" of covert actions to the Congress.

But here the obligation to provide "timely notice" ran only to the two intelligence committees. Thus, while the new legislation did not repeal Hughes-Ryan per se (this was done eight years later without fanfare), it was regarded as "superseding" Hughes-Ryan because it was subsequent legislation. Interestingly, none of the six committees that had been getting "timely notice" of covert actions publicly objected to the change. In part, this may have been because they recognized the existing system did not allow for meaningful oversight. According to a former staff director of the SFRC, briefings under Hughes-Ryan were oral and often cursory. They were limited to the chairman, the ranking member, and one or two staff members, all of whom were prohibited from saying anything to the others. In other words, there was no opportunity for follow-up. "We were 'established eunuchs,'" he later recalled.