'A Mute Watchdog'

[Coexist]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

The President's Intelligence Oversight Board, a panel that has existed for decades, helps police the government's surveillance activities. For several recent presidents, the IOB has been an important watchdog, monitoring potential abuses and legal violations.

Given the Bush gang's record, you'd think the panel would have been working overtime the last several years. We are, after all, talking about a White House that has endorsed secret prisons, rendition policies, torture, and unaccountable domestic wiretapping without warrants. If the IOB exists to investigate intelligence and surveillance abuses, it was tailor made for George W. Bush's presidency.

Except, it hasn't quite worked the way it was supposed to.

<snip>
The President's Intelligence Oversight Board -- the principal civilian watchdog of the intelligence community -- is obligated under a 26-year-old executive order to tell the attorney general and the president about any intelligence activities it believes "may be unlawful." The board was vacant for the first two years of the Bush administration.

The FBI sent copies of its violation reports directly to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. But the board's mandate is to provide independent oversight, so the absence of such communications has prompted critics to question whether the board was doing its job.

You think?