Quiz question for intelligence wonkish kossacks:
How many cases of possible illegal or improper U.S. intelligence activities were referred by President Bush's Intelligence Oversight Board to the Attorney General during Bush's tenure so far?
What is the Intelligence Oversight Board, you ask? That and a few more pertinent facts to crib your quiz, below the fold...
From the
CIA Factbook on Intelligence:
Intelligence Oversight Board
The President's Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) was established by President Gerald Ford in 1976 as a White House entity with oversight responsibility for the legality and propriety of intelligence activities. The Board, which reports to the President, is charged primarily with preparing reports "of intelligence activities that the IOB believes may be unlawful or contrary to Executive order or Presidential directive." The Board may also refer such reports to the Attorney General. This standard assists the President in ensuring that highly sensitive intelligence activities comply with law and Presidential directive. In 1993, the IOB was made a standing committee of the PFIAB.
As you might quess, the timing of the IOB suggests its creation stems from the Intelligence agency abuses by Nixon unveiled by the Church Committee in the mid-70's.
You may want to know what "PFIAB" is all about, so also courtesy of the CIA:
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) is maintained within the Executive Office of the President. Its sixteen members serve at the discretion of the President and are appointed from among trustworthy and distinguished citizens outside of government on the basis of achievement, experience, and independence. They serve without compensation. The Board continually reviews the performance of all government agencies engaged in the collection, evaluation, or production of intelligence or in the execution of intelligence policy. It also assesses the adequacy of management, personnel, and organization in intelligence agencies and advises the President concerning the objectives, conduct, and coordination of the activities of these agencies. The Advisory Board is specifically charged to make appropriate recommendations for actions to improve and enhance the performance of the intelligence efforts of the United States.
You might also wonder how a part-time, citizen board would discover violations of intelligence laws? Answer: The FBI.
According to the Electronic Privacy Intelligence Center (EPIC), over just the past two years, the FBI forwarded over 100 such cases to the IOB, most of which are minor, but, according to the DOJ Inspector General, a number of them were "significant."
Now the answer, per today's Chicago Tribune, to the question, how many such "significant" cases since 2001 have been referred back to the Attorney General?
NADA. Zippo. Goose egg. Not a single one.
Why not? Not surprisingly, the BushCo regime looks at such boards and commissions as meddlesome intruders upon their circle of trust (Rove and Cheney) who need no advice on governing.
"This administration has had a consistent lack of interest in what causes failures," said former Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from mid-2001 to early 2003. "There's a disinterest in understanding what happened, much less holding anyone accountable. It's part of a larger environment of secrecy and a `we know it all' attitude."
Unlike previous Presidents since Ford, Bush has replaced "trustworthy and distinguished citizens outside of government on the basis of achievement, experience, and independence" (emphasis mine), with political hacks, including Ray Hunt, Texas oilman and a director at Halliburton.
Former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke said the board is supposed to include members without a government background in order to get a citizen perspective, but Bush "put more big donors on PFIAB than anyone had before. ... What Bush did with [the board] was to make it political. ... That was new."
Brent Scrowcroft had headed up this board for Bush, but when he committed the grave sin of speaking truth to power on Iraq and recommended reorganizing intelligence operations under the CIA (ie, away from DOD and Rumsfeld), BushCo hastened the board's irrelevance.
Another footnote from the DOJ IG report: Possible FISA violations accounted for nearly 70 percent of the reports from the FBI to the board in 2005.
Bush and his defenders like to assert that God's President is capable of conducting intelligence activities without Congressional or FISA court oversight.
Not according to the facts.