Katherine A. Scott. Reining In the State

Public disgust with the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal fueled one of the most remarkable periods of political reform in modern American history. For the first time, Congress sought to rein in the power of the executive branch in the long-secretive area of national security. The achievements of that relatively brief period include the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the 1974 Hughes-Ryan Amendment limiting covert actions by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the creation of permanent intelligence committees in both houses of Congress, and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Congress debated but did not pass a formal charter for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), but Attorney General Edward Levi promulgated intelligence investigation guidelines that accomplished at least some of the aims of FBI critics. President Gerald Ford, reacting to revelations of CIA abuses, issued an executive order forbidding assassinations of foreign leaders by U.S. government officials. With the perspective of several decades, most observers today have serious reservations about the effectiveness of these reforms. Commentators on both the political left and right argue that the War Powers Resolution has not restrained presidents from sending American armed forces into harm's way. Many critics believe that the congressional intelligence committees have generally been co-opted or manipulated by the intelligence agencies. The FISA court is widely seen as giving a cloak of legitimacy to the very spying it was designed to control.

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