Congressional oversight of intelligence: 9/11 and the Iraq war

Congressional oversight of intelligence, long shrouded in secrecy and insularity, firmly entered the public domain following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the decision to intervene militarily in Iraq in March 2003. Intelligence controversies surrounding both of these events generated an unusual open window into the oversight process via public hearings and published reports. Yet, despite greater public disclosure, the role of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in performing their oversight function has been largely neglected by scholars.;This dissertation addresses several important questions concerning the oversight function of Congress: Have the intelligence committees been successful in performing oversight vis-a-vis the executive branch? Did Congress meaningfully restructure the intelligence oversight process after 9/11? Should there have been more scrutiny by Congress of executive branch claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Did partisanship and individual member norms constrain Congress from having the ability to check and balance an aggressive executive branch that was willing to exploit intelligence?;The dissertation builds on the pre-9/11 scholarship on intelligence oversight by utilizing extensive interviews with key participants in the congressional intelligence community along with the extensive public record created from the 9/11 Commission Report, the Senate Intelligence Committee's reports and other primary sources to forge a new understanding of the limited efficacy of legislative oversight of intelligence.;The dissertation is organized into seven chapters. In chapter one, I discuss the principles of congressional oversight, and how this dissertation, and political science in general, can shed light on key aspects of the debates regarding intelligence oversight. In chapters two and three I discuss the principal actors and key characteristics of intelligence oversight in the House and Senate. In chapter four, I discuss the implications of legislative versus executive branch tensions in the context of intelligence oversight. In chapter five, I analyze Congress' response to 9/11. In chapter six, I consider how oversight was practiced with respect to the Iraq war. In chapter seven, the principles of effective oversight will be applied toward recommending ways of perfecting Congress's role.