Police Patrols vs. Fire Alarms:Congressional oversight of CIA in the early Cold War era.

Using never-before-published/cited historical materials from archives holding deceased legislators’ papers around the country, this paper compares the amount and quality of oversight performed by Congress in relation to CIA during the Truman/ Eisenhower presidencies. McCubbins and Schwartz suggested in the 1980s that legislative oversight varies in relation to events/conditons in the American political environment, and that oversight resembles a fire alarm process, rather than systematic police patrols. This paper shows such variation in comparing three years: 1950, 1955, and 1958, with the oversight being by far the most vigorous in 1958, but confirms that congressional oversight in that era was never systematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]