Sharing Secrets With Lawmakers:
Congress as a User of Intelligence,1997
Sharing Secrets with Lawmakers: Congress as a User of Intelligence
March 20, 1997Georgetown University
Conference co-sponsor: Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy
At the center of this one-day public conference was a provocative study by L. Britt Snider, Sharing Secrets with Lawmakers: Congress as a User of Intelligence. Mr. Snider, currently the Inspector General at the Central Intelligence Agency, was once staff director of the Aspin-Brown Commission, general counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (Counterintelligence and Security), and counsel to the Senate's Church Committee. Much has been written about congressional oversight of intelligence, but relatively little about the nature and impact of intelligence-sharing with the congress. Mr. Snider's book is the first comprehensive study of its kind, and it is a major contribution to the literature on the intelligence process. At the conference, senior representatives from Congress, the Intelligence Community, academia, the media and the Executive Branch discussed the problems, pitfalls, and possibilities in sharing intelligence with the Legislative Branch.