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1 (December 14, 2005)

handle is hein.crs/crsmthmaohi0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Research k Service Memorandum December 14, 2005 TO: Sen. Dianne Feinstein FROM: Alfred Cumming Specialist in Intelligence and National Security Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division SUBJECT: Congress as a Consumer of Intelligence Information This responds to your request for a discussion of Congress and its role as a consumer of national intelligence, and for a listing and a description of some of the U.S. Intelligence Community's principal intelligence products, including an identification of those which the executive branch routinely shares with Congress, and those which it does not. Limitations on Congressional Access to Certain National Intelligence By virtue of his constitutional role as commander-and-in-chief and head of the executive branch, the President has access to all national intelligence collected, analyzed and produced by the Intelligence Community. The President's position also affords him the authority - which, at certain times, has been aggressively asserted' - to restrict the flow of intelligence information to Congress and its two intelligence committees, which are charged with providing legislative oversight of the Intelligence Community.2 As a result, the President, and a small number of presidentially-designated Cabinet-level officials, including 1 Reportedly furious about what he apparently believed to be unauthorized disclosures of classified information by Congress, President Bush on Oct. 5, 2001, ordered that the provision of classified information and sensitive law enforcement information be restricted to the Republican and Democratic leaders of both the Senate and House, and to the chairmen and ranking members of the two congressional intelligence committees. Until the President issued his order, and in keeping with prior practice, all Members of the intelligence committees had access to most such information. Bush agreed to rescind his order after several days, following a personal telephone conversation between the President and Sen. Bob Graham, then-chairman of the Senate's intelligence committee, and after negotiations between White House staff and Graham. See Bob Woodward, Bush at War, pp. 198- 199. (Simon and Schuster). 2 The Senate established its intelligence oversight committee, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), in May 1976. The House of Representatives followed suit in July 1977, creating the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Congressional Research Service Washington, D.C. 20540-7000

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