From radical contention to deference: A sociogenesis of intelligence oversight in the United States
Abstract
Using various archival sources including declassified memos from the CIA and other intelligence agencies from the sixties and seventies, the chapter proceeds in three steps to identify a now traditional script in the unfolding and management of intelligence surveillance scandals and associated oversight reforms. First, it shows how actors in intelligence used secrecy to cover up controversial and often illegal applications of computers in the context of state surveillance, using these new technologies to expand the political espionage against the New Left. Second, it turns to a series of surveillance scandals unleashed over that period, showing how radical denunciations of intelligence and computer surveillance gained traction across multiple fields exerting a de facto form of democratic control over the secret practices of intelligence, reducing the autonomy of the intelligence field. Third, the chapter shows how the Congressional inquiries of 1975, dubbed “The Year of Intelligence,” and subsequent reforms had a depoliticizing effect on intelligence oversight by confining it to technical issues (often technological or legal in nature). This historical precedent of engaging intelligence oversight reform in response to democratic constellations of the intelligence field can be read as a original script that has since seen many iterations.
