Strassel: Congress's NSA Fail

The subheadline of Kimberly Strassel's lates Potomac Watch column is "politicians demand oversight over intelligence, then make it a point not to know what's going on." Writes Strassel:

One of the jokes of today's call for more intelligence oversight is that no country currently has a greater (or more debilitating) amount of it. No effective intelligence service can disclose its secrets to the public. Democracies handle this by entrusting the peoples' representatives—duly elected—with the solemn task of minding the spies.

Western European countries handle this oversight entirely within the executive branch. The U.S. doles it out to all and sundry: executive, legislative, judicial. If you live in Washington and have a pulse, you too can oversee intelligence.

This system was supposed to legitimize intelligence programs. All it has done is reduce accountability. The existence in particular of a court established in 1978 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (and public misperceptions about the FISA court's role) has allowed Congress to pass the buck, freeing politicians from the need to take ownership of intelligence matters.