Obama Restores Power To Intelligence Oversight Board

[SpartanDem]

Source: Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama Thursday restored an independent intelligence advisory agency's authority to tell the attorney general if it thinks that a U.S. intelligence agency may have broken the law, a move intended to improve oversight of those agencies.

That power was stripped away by former President George W. Bush more than a year ago. Bush's executive order limited the Intelligence Oversight Board to exposing potential violations of law to only the national intelligence director, the president and the agency involved.

Obama amended that Bush-era decision Thursday with his own executive order, ruling that the attorney general would also have to be notified of any possible intelligence-related violations.

Obama's amendment applies to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, a larger intelligence advisory panel which has been coordinating with the White House on the adequacy of U.S. intelligence for more than 50 years. The IOB is a subcommittee of that larger panel.





Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/obama-restores-power-to-i_n_339005.html

[impik]

1. Yep. He is *just* like Bush

[JackRiddler]

2. Interesting spin all around.

The PFIAB is not an "agency."

It is a group of policy elders and rich people with strictly advisory capacity - the kind of people who have been justifying wrong policy for thirty years a la Scowcroft - with a history of being a favored device for sprinkling perfume on covert operations bullshit primarily under Republican administrations.

What is the evidence that Bush downgraded this ostensible steering committee for the illegal activities of CIA and Co.?

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R