Congress Provides Little Oversight Of Intelligence

The upshot of a new empirical analysis of Congressional oversight of intelligence functions is that Congress does very little to supervise intelligence agencies. This is troubling because, due to the secrecy of these agencies from the general public, a select subset of members of Congress (and their staff) and the President are the only people in the country outside the agencies with anything approaching an adequate amount of information to provide meaningful oversight to these agencies. The media and lobbyist checks available to address problems in other parts of the federal government are absent or only minimally and partially informed when it comes to the nation's intelligence agencies.