US intelligence watchdog silent for over five years under Bush/Cheney

[G_j]

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/US_intelligence_watchdog_silent_for_over_0715.html

US intelligence watchdog silent for over five years under Bush/Cheney RAW STORY
Published: Sunday July 15, 2007


The Washington Post reports that the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, put in place to monitor intelligence abuses, was silent for 5 1/2 years under the Bush Administration, according to the Justice Department. For the first two years of the Bush/Cheney reign, the board was vacant.

"It's now apparent that the IOB was not actively employed in the early part of the administration," says Anthony Harrington, the board's chairman during the Clinton administration. "And it was a crucial period when its counsel would seem to have been needed the most."

EXCERPTS:

The President's Intelligence Oversight Board -- the principal civilian watchdog of the intelligence community -- is obligated under a 26-year-old executive order to tell the attorney general and the president about any intelligence activities it believes "may be unlawful." The board was vacant for the first two years of the Bush administration.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) added: "It is deeply disturbing that this administration seems to spend so much of its energy and resources trying to find ways to ignore any check and balance on its authority and avoid accountability to Congress and the American public."

..more..