A new House Intelligence Committee review marking nearly 25 years since the Sept. 11 attacks says Congress never adopted several of the 9/11 Commission’s central recommendations for overseeing U.S. intelligence agencies, leaving structural weaknesses largely unresolved.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Nearly a quarter-century after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks exposed major failures across the U.S. intelligence system, Congress still has not implemented some of the most significant reforms recommended to strengthen oversight of the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies, according to a new congressional review.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, or HPSCI, released a 66-page retrospective report Monday examining how the intelligence community and congressional supervision of it have changed since the 9/11 Commission issued its findings in 2004.
The committee formally presented the report at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania as the country approaches the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
Although intelligence collection, counterterrorism operations and national-security structures have changed substantially since 2001, the House committee concluded that Congress has made far less progress in reforming its own ability to scrutinize the intelligence agencies operating largely outside public view.
“While much has changed in the world since the release of the Report, challenges with reforming congressional oversight have not,” the new report states.
That finding echoes one of the harshest conclusions of the original 9/11 Commission.
In 2004, the commission characterized congressional oversight of the intelligence community as “dysfunctional” and concluded that the “House and Senate intelligence committees lack the power, influence, and sustained capability” necessary to ensure accountability.
Because significant portions of the intelligence community’s operations, capabilities, spending and failures are classified, Congress serves as one of the principal mechanisms through which intelligence agencies can be subjected to democratic oversight.
The 9/11 Commission therefore recommended substantial changes to the congressional structure responsible for supervising the intelligence community.
Among its most ambitious proposals was the creation of a single, powerful bicameral intelligence committee combining the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
That unified House-Senate body would have concentrated intelligence oversight authority within one congressional committee rather than maintaining separate structures in each chamber.
The commission further recommended creating a dedicated oversight subcommittee within the combined panel.
Unlike lawmakers responsible for intelligence budgets, members of that subcommittee would be able to concentrate specifically on transparency, agency performance, failures and accountability rather than simultaneously handling spending decisions.
Congress never adopted that model.
The 9/11 Commission also proposed an alternative in the event lawmakers were unwilling to create a unified intelligence committee.
Under that recommendation, Congress would more directly connect the legislation authorizing intelligence activities with the legislation providing the money to conduct them.
That recommendation also remains unimplemented.
Congress continues to handle the Intelligence Authorization Act, which establishes and authorizes intelligence-community programs and activities, separately from the Defense Appropriations Act that supplies much of the funding supporting those activities.
Critics argue that separating authorization from appropriations weakens Congress’s ability to use one of its most powerful oversight mechanisms: control of federal spending.
If lawmakers identify misconduct, serious operational failures or ineffective programs, their ability to impose immediate financial consequences can be complicated when intelligence oversight and appropriations are handled through different committees and legislative processes.
Jamil N. Jaffer, executive director of the National Security Institute at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former senior attorney for HPSCI, urged lawmakers earlier this year to reconsider that structure.
“Congress ought to take seriously the recommendation made by the 9/11 Commission from over two decades ago that our appropriations system for intelligence is broken,” Jaffer said during a May 20 House Intelligence Committee hearing.
Congress did make some changes following the commission’s report, including strengthening certain authorities available to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The new House report, however, concludes that lawmakers stopped short of the more fundamental institutional changes envisioned by the 9/11 Commission.
One of the reforms that Congress technically approved has never been put into practice.
A 2004 Senate resolution called for the Senate Appropriations Committee to establish a dedicated intelligence subcommittee.
Such a body could have provided a direct connection between oversight findings and funding decisions, potentially giving lawmakers greater ability to reduce or condition intelligence spending when agencies committed serious errors or abuses.
Nearly 22 years later, that intelligence appropriations subcommittee still does not exist.
The House experimented with another model beginning in 2007.
Congress established the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel within the House Appropriations Committee, giving the panel responsibility for reviewing intelligence spending and producing a classified assessment of the intelligence community’s budget.
That arrangement lasted only four years.
The panel was dissolved in 2011, eliminating another mechanism intended to integrate congressional intelligence oversight with appropriations.
The latest report therefore presents a mixed record of post-9/11 reform.
The intelligence community itself underwent extensive restructuring after the attacks, including changes in information sharing, coordination and counterterrorism operations.
Congress, however, left much of its own oversight architecture intact despite the commission’s warning that ineffective congressional supervision contributed to systemic weaknesses before Sept. 11.
The issue carries particular significance because most intelligence-community operations cannot be examined routinely by the general public.
Classified programs, covert activities, surveillance authorities and intelligence budgets frequently receive little or no public scrutiny, leaving the House and Senate intelligence committees responsible for examining conduct that Americans cannot independently evaluate.
That makes the effectiveness of congressional oversight central not only to national security but also to protecting constitutional liberties and preventing abuse of secret government powers.
The 9/11 Commission’s recommendations were intended to make that oversight more powerful, sustained and institutionally independent.
Instead, the House Intelligence Committee’s 25-year review concludes that some of the central weaknesses identified in 2004 remain embedded in Congress itself.
The report’s release at the Flight 93 National Memorial places renewed attention on those unfinished reforms as lawmakers prepare to mark a quarter-century since the attacks that originally prompted the most comprehensive examination of U.S. intelligence failures in modern history.
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