Oversight of CIA Activities

Currently, two congressional select committees and the CIA’s Inspector General oversee the CIA’s activities. GAO’s Authority to Review CIA Programs

Generally, we have broad authority to evaluate agency programs and investigate matters related to the receipt, disbursement, and use of public money. Currently, our access to the CIA is limited to requests for information that relates either to governmentwide reviews or programs for which the CIA might have relevant information. In general, we have the most success obtaining access to CIA information when we request threat assessments, and the CIA does not perceive our audits as oversight of its activities. The issue of our access has arisen periodically in the intervening years as our work has required some level of access to CIA programs and activities. Since then, GAO has limited its pursuit of greater access because of limited demand for this work from Congress, particularly from the intelligence committees. Given a lack of Congressional requests and our limited resources, we have made a conscious decision to deal with the CIA on a case-by-case basis. Current Access Falls Into Three Categories

Currently, the CIA responds to our requests for information in three ways: it provides the information, it provides the information or a part of it with some restriction, or it does not provide the information at all. On some of our audits related to national security issues, the CIA provides us with limited access to its written threat assessments and analyses, such as National Intelligence Estimates. Conclusion

Our access to CIA information and programs has been limited by both legal and practical factors. Through the years our access has varied and we have not done detailed audit work at CIA since the early 1960s. GAO’s Access-to- Records Authority

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What GAO Found

Oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) generally comes from two select committees of Congress and the CIA's Inspector General. GAO has broad authority to evaluate CIA programs. In reality, however, GAO faces both legal and practical limitations on its ability to review these programs. For example, it has no access to some CIA "unvouchered" accounts and cannot compel its access to foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information. In addition, as a practical matter, GAO is limited by the CIA's level of cooperation, which has varied through the years. GAO has not actively audited the CIA since the early 1960s, when it discontinued such work because CIA was not providing it with enough access to information to allow GAO to do its job. The issue has arisen since then from time to time as GAO's work has required some level of access to CIA programs and information. However, given a lack of requests from Congress for GAO to do specific work at the CIA and its limited resources, GAO made a decision not to pursue the issue further. Today, GAO's dealings with the CIA are mostly limited to information requests that relate either to governmentwide reviews or analyses of threats to U.S. national security on which the CIA might have some information. The CIA provides GAO with the requested information, provides the information with some restrictions, or does not provide the information at all. In general, GAO is most successful in obtaining CIA information when it requests threat assignments and when the CIA does not perceive GAO's audits as oversight of its activities.