WHERE OVERSIGHT STARTS

The incoming chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, recently said the agenda for the committee would be to look back to the use of prewar intelligence and at practices such as surveillance of phone calls and at future threats from terrorism. It is an ambitious agenda for a committee that has not worked well in recent years. The announcement also represents the most significant change the public will see in Congress over the next two years – more vigorous oversight of the executive branch.

With it comes new power for congressional moderates.

Since 2004, the Intelligence Committee has been promising to complete a thorough investigation, called Phase II, into how the Bush administration used intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. With Republicans dominating the committee, some of the most politically charged areas of inquiry have been delayed by Chairman Pat Roberts. The committee has released some of its work, but the broad question of whether the White House accurately and responsibly represented the information it had at the time remains unanswered. Now, the outgoing chairman no doubt wishes the committee had finished the work under better terms. Too late.

Certainly, this heightened level of oversight could become a partisan attack, at least as bad as the meager amount of oversight from the president’s party during the last four years. Democrats can avoid this by attracting the support and votes of Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. They voted with Democrats earlier this year to force the committee to release the early part of Phase II, and their support on the final portions would greatly enhance the impact of the work. The two senators, however, have no incentive to participate in frivolous accusations, so whatever the committee staff produces must be substantial and substantiated.

Further, the need for their support demonstrates the value of senators who can work with the opposing party. Sens. Snowe and Hagel are in this position because they put the value of what they saw in the earlier oversight work ahead of simply protecting their political party. Taking that path then gives them unusual clout now.

The influence of moderates from both parties will be especially important for oversight reports because the reports will almost never emerge with broad bipartisan support or without counterclaims. Moderates will be bellwethers during these times, a means for the public, which largely does not trust Congress, to judge the fairness of the work being produced.

Senate Intelligence will be among the most closely watched. What happens there in the coming months will either demonstrate a return to the kind of bipartisan oversight for which the committee had been known until recently. Or it will continue down a partisan path that weakens the value of its work.

If Congress is going to reinvigorate its neglected oversight duties, its key to legitimacy is in the political middle.