House Must Widen Clearances in January for Oversight of Intel Community

​The intelligence agencies are, on paper, subject to congressional oversight. From the Senate’s Church Committee that revealed CIA misdeeds in the 1970s, to the current revelations of the House Judiciary Committee about domestic political surveillance by the federal government, the nation has benefited from the watchdog role of Congress.
 
But such moments are rare. Many congressional attempts to peer into the actual intelligence operations of federal agencies amount to howling in the wind. Often, the agencies don’t bother to even answer congressional queries with substantive responses, if they reply at all. This includes efforts to learn if the agencies are spying on those tasked with overseeing them.
 
The arrogance of the agencies arises from the fact that Congress doesn’t know what it is overseeing. Often accused of fishing expeditions by the intelligence community, Congress is reduced to fishing for the lack of a diving mask to see clearly. When few congressional staff members are given the top secret/sensitive clearances, they cannot inform their bosses what is actually going on within the intelligence agencies.
 
Historically, only a few staffers for a few select committees, such as the House and Senate intelligence committees, were given clearances. The actual Members of these committees, tasked with many other responsibilities, simply don’t have the time to go into a secure compartment to do a deep dive into the hundreds of pages of classified documents that reveal how federal agencies might be conducting warrantless surveillance on Americans.
 
In 2021, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer changed that for the Senate. He took the bold step to improve oversight by the Senate by allowing top secret/sensitive clearance to be available for one personal aide per senator.
 
The intelligence community and its champions on the Hill now resolutely oppose, behind the scenes of course, extending a similar rule to one personal aide for each House Member. Members should take this as the calculated insult that it is.
 
Every aide granted clearance, like those in the Senate, would have to clear an FBI background check. The idea that a few hundred clearances cannot be extended to trusted advisors of House Members accountable to their constituents is laughable given that the federal government itself issues an estimated 1.3 million top-secret security clearances to people working in the intelligence community and consultants. Yet only a small number of staffers in the U.S. House of Representatives are allowed to review top secret information for their Members.
 
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t need a new law. All that is needed is for the next Republican or Democratic House majority to ensure that wider access to clearances is part of the House Rules package for the 119th Congress that begins in January.
 
Even without enhanced Congressional oversight, what we have learned about federal government surveillance abuse has kept PPSA busy since we began five years ago. What we don’t know is undoubtedly more significant. House Members of all political leanings have a stake in extending Congressional oversight in a healthy way. What better way to kick off the next Congress?