by Jason Vest

About the author: Jason Vest, who writes on national security issues, is a contributing editor to the Nation.

As the civil liberties community endeavors to stem the tide of threats to the Constitution posed by [Attorney General] John Ashcroft’s Justice Department and new Department of Homeland Security, some in Washington policy-making circles watched with trepidation on November 13, 2002, as Congress gave Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld permission to create a new Under Secretariat for Intelligence at the Pentagon. According to some observers, not only does the move have the potential to obscure Congressional oversight of much of the nation’s intelligence apparatus, but it could result in analysis increasingly politicized and slanted toward reporting what the most hawkish officials want to hear.

To be sure...