This question is absolutely 100% not related to any conspiracy theory. The CIA has been involved in some rather shady activities over the years such as trying to plot to kill Fidel Castro, sending operatives in small forces to South America to build up forces to influence government control, and arms smuggling during Iran-Contra. There are probably plenty of other covert things that nobody else knows about. That is the definition of their job.
That brings me to the question. If they are involved in things that may be considered shady or scandalous for politicians to be involved in, exactly where do they get their orders. It is my understanding that Congress never knew about most of the uncovered activity in the past so how does it get past them and where to the chain of authority lie exactly?
Since the President gets a daily intelligence briefing, I think he has an idea of what the CIA is up to.
The CIA (and other intelligence agencies) aren’t supposed to be able to go off and start rogue operations, despite what you might think from reading Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum.
The Iran-Contra Scandal is a good place to research info about how the CIA’s activities and White House approval are supposed to work and how it can break down.
The House and Senate Intelligence Committees are supposed to be kept informed also.
The President is responsible for knowing what the CIA is up to. The Constitution declares that the executive power of the US government is vested in him. The CIA would not have a leg to stand on to keep secrets from the President.
The Congress, however, presents a much more complicated question. After the abuses of power by intelligence agencies throughout the '60s and '70s, Congress created intelligence committees to oversee the CIA and its operations. Although the work of the committees is strictly secret, there are some times in which secrets are too sensitive for even this handful of Senators and Congressmen to know.
For these times, the CIA and the White House are expected to inform the Chairman and Ranking Member of the intelligence committees, and the four leaders of the House and Senate as well. The notification of these ultra-secret operations may be delayed somewhat, because the law requires simply “timely” notification of such decisions. In Iran-Contra, for example, the popular story was that Reagan Administration officials planned to notify Congress of the arms sales on the last day of the Reagan presidency.
As an interesting note, however, let’s say you are Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and you are told of some outrageous plot by the CIA. Only seven others in Congress were also informed. What are you gonna do? Who can you complain to, other than the President? The information is so highly classified, simply being informed of these black operations isn’t terribly useful from the point of view of maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Executive Branch.
If you feel strongly enough about it, you could leak information to a foreign news service and maintain at least deniability. If you were really clever, you could even make the message mathematically verifiable without linking it to yourself. Of course, you’d only do this in cases of extreme need, when you felt the CIA was acting against the best interests of the country as a whole.
My point, I suppose, is that there is always some way to blow the whistle.
This may be straying into GD territory, but I’m looking at a Wall Street Journal article right now that has Administration officials excoriating Senator Jay Rockefeller and Senator Ron Wyden, both members of the intelligence committee, for saying that they oppose a program in the black budget. They did not say what the program was, only that it was wasteful. Here’s other stories about it.
After these Senators stated their opposition to a program they refused to describe, somebody within the Administration leaked out some details: it’s a super-secret satellite program.
Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, those Administration officials said “discussions were under way about whether to ask Senate Republicans to consider removing Messrs. Rockefeller and Wyden from the committee.”
So, the two Senators didn’t break any rules, but an Administration official leaks something, so the Senators are to blame? That’s the kind of scenario I was referencing in the last paragraph of the previous post.