Roles Of Congress In Strategic Intelligence Essay

What ought to be the proper role of Congress in Strategic Intelligence? When addressing what Congresses role should be a quick understanding of what Congress currently does for intelligence. Congress monitors and regulates intelligence programs and authorizes and appropriates funds. Basically, Congress is in a position to monitor the intelligence community to ensure that funds are not misappropriated, regulate intelligence programs, and spying is not conducted on American citizens. However, even with providing oversight into Intelligence it does not mean that Congress knows about all covert missions conducted. This is because the President of the United States holds emergency power over covert operations and has the ability to authorize missions without Congresses knowledge. This means the White House holds the power to control classification and withhold access to include information about operational details from members of congress. In addition, Congress should push harder in having more oversight in the intelligence world because of investigations, like the one into torture techniques …show more content…
Intelligence agencies have been caught spying on allies, American people and Politian’s, and torture techniques used on terrorist personnel to extract information. With all of the different findings of wrong doings that have came to light, President Barack Obama came out and admitted it will take time to regain the trust of the American people along with European Governments. When situations like this arise, it puts a black eye on all intelligence fields. The American people in general do not know how the intelligence field works. If Congress can put forth a strong effort to reform the perception of the national security agencies and open up a little more information to the public, then it could lead to the American people beginning to trust