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More than 200 times in the past two decades, Congressmen have sponsored bills and resolutions calling for more effective supervision of the CIA. At least twice, Congress has voted on such legislation, and both times the bills were soundly defeated. Last week Republican Senators Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee and Lowell P. Weicker Jr. of Connecticut made another attempt. Their bill would create a committee of House and Senate members to supervise and regulate the CIA and all other members of the U.S. intelligence committee.
Possible Leaks. Its chances of passage are rated better than even, because of the storm over the CIA and because the bill was referred to reform-minded Sam Ervin's Government Operations Committee. But the bill may yet be defeated. Even many members of Congress believe that they should not be entrusted with CIA secrets because of possible leaks. The alternative is to keep Congress uninformed, which seems equally unacceptable.
Whatever the degree to which Congress can be informed—and even critics of the CIA concede that it is tricky for legislators to be in on the decision-making of an espionage agency—there is a clear necessity for Congress to hold the Executive more accountable for what the CIA does.
To some extent, the dilemma over the CIA has to do with an American need to have it both ways: the U.S. wants to be (and to see itself as) a morally responsible country and yet function as a great power in an immoral world. As Bowdoin's Robinson puts it, "There is an inevitable tension between an organization like the CIA and a democratic society. From time to time there will be pulling back when the organization may have gone too far." The U.S. has reached such a point with the revelations about its actions in Chile, which, on balance, are hard to justify. While it cannot rule out covert operations in all circumstances, the nation must remember that it has better and stronger weapons to rely on: its economic and technological weight, its diplomacy, its cultural impact and —though tarnished—its freedom.