In the executive branch, accountability refers to internal mechanisms responsible for meeting presidential requirements in terms of support for foreign policy objectives, legality, and efficacy. Efficacy in this context is operational: does a specific project meet the particular needs of the executive, and is it legal? Does it fit within the broader panorama of foreign policy requirements and objectives? What could the consequences be if the project fails? What collateral damage could there be from the program? In the early years, it was also asked whether the program could be traced to the president or whether that particular connection could be denied if the program were discovered – in intelligence terms, plausible deniability. Within the CIA itself, internal accountability focuses on internal authority, requiring formal internal hierarchy; established bureaucratic processes; recourse; and, finally, internal autonomy of the mechanism. These processes are in place to constrain the behavior of personnel to align with internal expectations and the overall objective of the CIA's mission. These processes are locked firmly in a hierarchical chain of accountability that leads to the director. The one role deviating from this hierarchy is that of the inspector general, statutorily independent from this chain but also responsible to it. External accountability, the focus of this chapter, explores the development of congressional oversight mechanisms that hold the intelligence community responsible for its actions; serve as information conduits for intelligence information among the intelligence community, Congress, and the public; and serve as a check on the activities of the intelligence services.

This friction in the relationship between the executive branch and Congress is one reason oversight has developed incrementally and unevenly, and why it continues to function at a level that is suboptimal.