United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 2001-07-18 monographic deposited born digital 12 p. GA 1.13:GAO-01-975T https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-975T P0b002ee180394191 f:d01975t DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-28 GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-975T machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-975T GAO-01-975T Audits Interagency relations Classified information Federal intelligence agencies Testimony A01411

Oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) generally comes from two select committees of Congress and the CIA's Inspector General. GAO has broad authority to evaluate CIA programs. In reality, however, GAO faces both legal and practical limitations on its ability to review these programs. For example, it has no access to certain CIA ''unvouchered'' accounts and cannot compel its access to foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information. In addition, as a practical matter, GAO is limited by the CIA's level of cooperation, which has varied through the years. GAO has not actively audited the CIA since the early 1960s, when it discontinued such work because CIA was not providing it with sufficient access to information to perform its mission. The issue has arisen since then from time to time as GAO's work has required some level of access to CIA programs and information. However, given a lack of requests from Congress for GAO to do specific work at the CIA and its limited resources, GAO has made a conscious decision not to further pursue the issue. Today, GAO's dealings with the CIA are mostly limited to requesting information that relates either to governmentwide reviews of analyses of threats to U.S. national security on which the CIA might have some information. The CIA either provides GAO with the requested information, provides the information with some restrictions, or does not provide the information at all. In general, GAO is most successful at getting access to CIA information when it requests threat assignments and the CIA does not perceive GAO's audits as oversight of its activities. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-975T/html/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-975T.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-975T/pdf/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-975T.pdf GAO-01-975T https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-GAO-01-975T Testimony GAO-01-975T; Central Intelligence Agency: Observations on GAO Access to Information on CIA Programs and Activities; Audits Interagency relations Classified information Federal intelligence agencies Title 5 Section 552 5 U.S.C. 552 Title 31 Section 3523 Title 31 Section 3524 Title 31 Section 712 Title 31 Section 716 Title 31 Section 717 31 U.S.C. 3523 31 U.S.C. 3524 31 U.S.C. 712 31 U.S.C. 716 31 U.S.C. 717 Title 50 Section 403 Title 50 Section 403j Title 50 Section 413 50 U.S.C. 403 50 U.S.C. 403j 50 U.S.C. 413