Congress's decline from the Founders' vision as "first among equals" in government
to an echo chamber of the unitary executive, has been a slow but steady process.
In the process we have seen a steady stream of unconstitutional wars and civil
liberties abuses at home. Nowhere is this decline more evident than in the
stark contrast between the Congressional response to intelligence agencies'
abuses during the post-Watergate era and its response to the far more serious
NSA abuses uncovered in recent years.
In 1975, Senator Frank Church (D-ID) convened an historic select committee
to investigate the US intelligence services for possible criminality in the
wake of Watergate. Thanks in part to reporting by Seymour Hersh and others,
abuses by the CIA, NSA, and FBI had come to light, including the monitoring
of US peace activists.
The Church Committee played its proper Congressional role, checking the power
of the executive branch as it had been spiraling out of control since the 1950s
and the early CIA covert action programs. The Committee sought to protect US
citizens against abuses by their government after those abuses had come to
light through leaks of secret government documents.
The parallel to the present NSA scandals cannot be ignored. What is completely
different, however, is that Congress is today acting as an advocate for the
executive branch's continuing abuses, and as an opponent to the civil liberties
of US citizens. Not only has Congress - with a precious few exceptions - accepted
the NSA's mass spying program on American citizens, it has actually been encouraging
the president to continue and expand the program!
Where once there was a Congressional committee to challenge and oppose the
president's abuse of power, today the president himself has been even allowed
by a complacent Congress to hand pick his own NSA review commission!
Are we really expected to believe that a commission appointed by the president
to look into the activities of the president's intelligence services will come
to anything more than a few superficial changes to give the impression of real
reform?
One of the president's commission recommendations is that the NSA cease holding
our phone records and demand that the private phone companies retain those
records instead - for the NSA to access as it wishes. This is supposed to be
reform?
The president will make a speech this Friday to tell the rest of us which
of the suggestions made by his own commission he will decide to implement.
Congress has no problem with that. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) admitted last
week that Congress has no intention of asserting itself in the process. "It's
my hope that [Obama will] do as much as he can through the executive process
because the legislative process will be difficult, perilous and long."
Senator Church famously said back in 1975:
"In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are
doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability
that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air... We must
know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around
on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left...
There would be no place to hide.... I know the capacity that is there to
make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and
all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under
proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the
abyss from which there is no return."
Have we reached that point? Let us hope not. Real reform begins with the repeal
of the PATRIOT Act and of the 2001 Authorization for the use of military force.
If we keep our eye on that goal and not allow ourselves to become distracted
with the president's phony commissions we might force Congress to listen.
