At a time when presidential power is expanding inexorably to deal with unprecedented terrorist threats, aggressive congressional oversight is an essential check against abuse. And at a time when both the House and the Senate are controlled by the president’s party-and unlikely to push him hard for information-the role of Congress’s investigative and auditing arm, the General Accounting Office, is especially vital.

Editorial writers and other guardians of privacy have had a field day with the reports that former Reagan National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter has come back as a cross between Dr. Strangelove and Big Brother. Poindexter is watching you, or soon will be, his detractors suggest, as they lovingly detail his 1990 convictions (later reversed on appeal) for his lies to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. The Web site for Poindexter’s "Total Information Awareness" program at the Pentagon foolishly fans such fears, featuring the slogan "Scientia Est Potentia"-Knowledge Is Power-complete with an ominous, all-seeing eye atop a pyramid.

One [FBI] agent, frustrated at encountering the "wall" [separating intelligence officials from criminal investigators], wrote to headquarters [on Aug. 29, 2001]: "Someday someone will die and-wall or not-the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain `problems.’ The biggest threat to us now, UBL [Osama bin Laden], is getting the most `protection.’ "-Opinion of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, November 18, 2002

There is, actually. Even the Bush Justice Department says so, explaining in a recent legal brief that people who sympathize with foreign terrorist groups are free to "meet with their members and advocate their causes"-which in many cases include peaceful political and humanitarian activities as well as mass murder. The First Amendment guarantees you a right to visit terrorists, speak with them, worship with them, have lunch with them, defend their methods, or sign up as a member of their group.

During a conversation on August 27, 2001, … [an agent in the FBI’s Minneapolis office told an FBI headquarters official that] he was trying to make sure that Moussaoui "did not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center." The Minneapolis agent said that the headquarters agent told him, "… You don’t have enough to show he is a terrorist." – Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint committee investigating intelligence failures, in testimony on September 24, 2002