Hughes–Ryan Act
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| Other short titles |
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|---|---|
| Long title | An Act to amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, and for other purposes. |
| Nicknames | Foreign Assistance Act |
| Enacted by | the 93rd United States Congress |
| Effective | December 30, 1974 |
| Citations | |
| Public law | 93-559 |
| Statutes at Large | 88 Stat. 1795, Sec. 662-663 |
| Codification | |
| Titles amended | 22 U.S.C.: Foreign Relations and Intercourse |
| U.S.C. sections amended | 22 U.S.C. ch. 32 § 2422 |
| Legislative history | |
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The Hughes–Ryan Act is a 1974 United States federal law that amended the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The Act was named for its co-authors, Senator Harold E. Hughes (D-Iowa) and Representative Leo Ryan (D-CA). The Act required the President of the United States to report all covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency to one or more Congressional committees within a set time limit.
This amendment addressed the question of CIA and Defense Department covert actions, and prohibited the use of appropriated funds for their conduct unless and until the President issues an official "Finding" that each such operation is important to the national security and submits these Findings to the appropriate Congressional committees – a total of six committees, at the time, growing to eight committees after the House and Senate "select committees" on intelligence were established.
The legislation was meant to ensure that the intelligence oversight committees within Congress were told of CIA actions within a reasonable time limit. Senator Hughes, in introducing the legislation in 1973, also saw it as a means of limiting major covert operations by military, intelligence, and national security agents conducted without the full knowledge of the president.
By the early years of the 1970s, the unpopular war in Southeast Asia and the unfolding Watergate scandal brought the era of minimal oversight to a screeching halt. The Congress was determined to rein in the Nixon administration and to ascertain the extent to which the nation's intelligence agencies had been involved in questionable, if not outright illegal, activities. A major stimulus for the amendment came from 1972 and 1973 hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee, provoked by Senator Hughes, a member of the committee, into covert military operations in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam in the early 1970s. The committee had found that Air Force and Navy air elements had conducted secret air strikes and falsified after-action reports to conceal the activity. For Hughes and several other senators, the military activity represented a secret war conducted through back-channel communications from the White House directly to field commanders in the Pacific Theater and the Vietnam War.
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