WASHINGTON, July 15 (UPI) -- A board established in the 1970s to identify U.S. intelligence abuses had no sitting members during the first two years of the Bush administration.
The President's Intelligence Oversight Board -- established by former President Gerald Ford and made permanent by former President Ronald Reagan in 1981 -- was created following CIA scandals in the '70s. It did not send any reports to the Justice Department during President George Bush's term until 2006, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
The FBI told the board of hundreds of violations by FBI agents after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- but the board did not identify which violations were actually unlawful, the newspaper said. The board forwarded reports this spring of violations in 2006, officials told the Post.
The board, the main civilian watchdog over the intelligence community, is mandated to inform the president and the attorney general about intelligence activities it believes "may be unlawful."
Anthony Harrington, who led the board during the Clinton administration, told the newspaper the board's counsel "would seem to have been needed the most" during the early part of the Bush administration.
