can get some guidance from our Oversight Committees on some change for the future.

Mr. SMITH of Florida. Well, I am curious, because currently you have this 30-day period. The way I read this first subparagraph, it describes an opportunity for agency comment, and it didn't say necessarily after the draft was completed. And you are not contemplating asking for agency comments prior to the draft report being completed; are you?

Mr. BOWSHER. No, no-after drafting the report. When we think it is a completed draft, we then send it to them for their comments. Mr. SMITH of Florida. Under current procedures, so that is a 30day comment period.

Mr. BOWSHER. Yes.

Mr. SMITH of Florida. Now you want to shrink that to 15, but do it the same way as it is being done now.

Mr. BOWSHER. That is right, but also we want to have it done more often than it is being done now. See, sometimes we are not doing it, because requesters say we have to have it more quickly, so don't wait for agency comments.

Mr. SMITH of Florida. Those people you are talking about are the people who have requested the report?

Mr. BOWSHER. Yes.

MEETING REQUESTER CONCERNS

Mr. SMITH of Florida. On what basis are you utilizing current procedures? Statutory or hit or miss? In other words, if I asked you for an HMO report, which I did, and which you did do, and you said you want agency comment, and I said no, you would not ask for agency comment; correct?

Mr. SOCOLAR. That would be under the statutory provision that authorizes us to provide assistance to the Congress. If you request a report, we are assisting you; and we would allow you to determine whether we get agency comments or not.

Mr. SMITH of Florida. Chuck just talked about doing it in more cases. How could you do it in more cases if the person requesting the report says no?

Mr. BOWSHER. We are not saying that we necessarily would, but what I am hoping to say to them is that it isn't going to take as long. We are going to have expedited procedures here, and we would like to try to talk you into it sometimes if we think that getting the agency comments would help us produce a better report. Mr. SMITH of Florida. I am concerned, and I hope you would be as concerned about the independence of the report and of the GAO. I don't want the agencies to be able under any circumstances to control those reports. And I wouldn't care if I was in the minority and we were talking about a Democratic administration.

I think the GAO is one of the best assets we have, and I don't want to see at any time any kind of capability on the part of any executive branch, no matter in whose hands it is, to be able to reduce the effectiveness of the GAO for the Congress by providing an independent analysis of these things, without color.

Mr. BOWSHER. Yes. When we get agency comments, in no way

ments and then make our judgment as to whether we think their points are valid or not.

If you look at our reports, you will generally see in the back that the GAO comments on agency comments, literally; and we say we agree or we disagree.

ADVANCE COPIES OF TESTIMONY

Mr. SMITH of Florida. The other thing is, can you explain what you meant by the third subparagraph: ". .. providing advance copies of testimony by GAO witnesses, as well as copies of any relevant reports concurrently to both the committee Chair and ranking minority Member."

If you are called as a witness, don't you have advanced testimony provided to the committee, like every other witness now?

Mr. BOWSHIER. Yes, we generally do. One of the problems that we have occassionally run into is that we hand it over to the committee; and the minority people don't get it. And so rather than have that happen, we thought it would be better if we could get an agreement that we could hand it to both sides as we are bringing it over to the committee.

Mr. SMITH of Florida. I never heard of any case where advanced testimony was not-was not given to the ranking minority people. Mr. BOWSHER. We unfortunately have had that situation, and the minority have raised cain about it.

Mr. FAZIO. On those rare occasions, cain was raised.

Mr. LEWIS. On those rare occasions.

Mr. BOWSHER. On those rare occasions.

Mr. SMITH of Florida. This is a problem, Jerry?

Mr. LEWIS. I do hear about it from time to time.

Mr. SMITH OF Florida. That is not appropriate. Thank you.
Mr. LEHMAN. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FAZIO. Mr. Lehman.

LOSS OF MICROCOMPUTERS

Mr. LEHMAN. We were talking about inventory, and one of the things was obsolescence; but we haven't talked about when things disappear from inventory. I was just wondering whether any of your computers have legs.

Mr. BOWSHER. No. We have worked very hard to keep control over this equipment, and we have had only one or two stolen, I think, in the last 5 years.

Mr. LEHMAN. No problem.

Mr. BOWSHER. It is not a big problem.

Mr. SMITH OF Florida. That is called rear exit obsolescence. You know what it is, that little sticker that you put on that says property of U.S. Government, that absolutely stops them cold. When they see that, boy, they won't touch it.

Mr. FAZIO. Well, they know it is obsolete.

Mr. SMITH of Florida. That is right, or it doesn't work.

Mr. FAZIO. Have you finished, Larry?

NOTIFICATION SYSTEM

Mr. FAZIO. I wanted to follow up on some of the thrust of Larry's questions. We went through a rather extensive discussion last year in the debate of our appropriations bill about ways GAO could be both accountable to minority and majority interests, and at the same time, protect the legislative prerogative of the GAO as our major investigative resource. Have you completed your efforts to balance these two priorities, and yet make reporting available?

I understood that you had come up with something that you felt was acceptable to a Committee Chairman who had a legitimate concern about in effect tipping off agencies, at the same time giving our minority Members the information they thought they needed.

Mr. BOWSHER. Right. On the notification system, we consulted with both the majority and minority staff to modify a system that was already in place run by the CRS, in which they list all the jobs that the 4 support agencies are doing. We had to make some modifications, because some of ours were not included, including some of our investigations. So, those are now included.

In other words, there was some concern, of course, that this could tip off what the investigation was all about. This could happen on a sensitive hot-line call, for example. But I think we now have procedures that will prevent those kinds of things from happening and at the same time give full disclosure to both sides of the aisle.

Mr. FAZIO. This is being disseminated now to the leadership on both sides?

Mr. BOWSHER. I just heard that your Committee didn't get it.
Mr. FAZIO. We have been getting it all these years.

Mr. BOWSHER. I just learned yesterday that somehow it didn't get delivered.

Mr. FAZIO. Your timing was perfect.

Mr. BOWSHER. Yes. But anyway, we have corrected that, too.

Mr. FAZIO. Well, this was actually a report that Mr. Dingell referred to in his Floor remarks which, with slight modification, as you have pointed out, is now adequate to meet the legitimate concerns of the minority.

Mr. BOWSHER. I think it gives you a complete picture now, not only of the new work, but our ongoing work.

INTEREST IN GAO TO FBI AND CIA

Mr. FAZIO. Very good. I have a couple of questions that relate to two agencies of the Federal government that historically have had a lot of independence from the Legislative Branch. I recently completed reading a book, I can't attest to its objectivity, but certainly it purports to be a balanced portrait of the FBI. I know that both the FBI and the CIA had tremendous latitude during the period from 1917, you know, the Marxist-Leninists revolutionary successes in the Soviet Union at the time, to late in the 1980s when our ongoing concern, both international and domestic, caused us to set up some rather clear walls between Legislative and Executive Branch

It strikes me that now that the threat of international communism is, to say the least, receding, we ought to take a look at the way in which the Legislative Branch provides oversight for both these agencies.

I am not saying that we should have wholesale access to information. But it seems to me at the same time that, from what I gather, the GAO has had minimal impact on both these agencies. I searched this very well documented and footnoted book to find any reference to the GAO. There are a number of references, by the way, to the appropriations hearings that affected the FBI, et cetera. I found none, as if there was almost no legitimate criticism or constructive commentary even about the activities of the FBI over many years.

I believe that the same situation would relate to the CIA. What I am interested in is your telling us what problems you have had with access, what you believe the appropriate role of the GAO would be in monitoring these intelligence-gathering agencies to protect the public interests and to protect the rights of this branch of government in monitoring and overseeing those activities of another branch of government. The executive should not, under our system at least, be as independent of views that may not coincide with its own as it has been for at least 50 years of our history and probably more.

Mr. BOWSHER. Let me start with the CIA, When I am asked can GAO audit all the parts of the federal government, I always say, we can with two exceptions. One is the Federal Reserve on which an agreement was worked out by my predecessor in the mid-1970s. Mr. FAZIO. We may take them on next year.

Mr. BOWSHER. Okay. I would like to explain that, because I think it leads into the other.

Mr. FAZIO. All right.

Mr. BOWSHER. That agreement was that we could not look at foreign operations, because they were considered sensitive with the other central banks and the money market policies. But we could look at every other aspect of the Fed. In other words, all the costs of running the Fed.

ACCESS TO CIA

On the CIA, we are excluded. When this came up a few years ago, I pointed out in testimony to the Intelligence Committee that we probably shouldn't be looking at the covert operations. But these are really small dollar operations. In other words, if you have an agent behind the lines or something like that, the money involved is very small. GAO doesn't have to be involved. We could be excluded just like we are from a couple of things at the Fed. But you have other big costs at the CIA in big systems and big operations, and we get excluded from it.

Now, when Senator Moynihan asked us to look at how the estimates were put together on the economic forecasts or the economic results of the Soviet economy, we were stonewalled. He thought at one time he had a specific agreement with them that we would be

rector himself, and he had 14 other people there; and they stonewalled us on everything.

Sometimes informally we get a little assistance on some issues if the Intelligence Committees send a signal that CIA should cooperate with the GAO. But this has been very rare in the past. So basically we have not looked at the CIA.

Now, we look at all the black programs in the Defense Department, at the national security agencies, some of them every bit as sensitive as anything the CIA is doing, except for the covert operations.

Mr. FAZIO. So in other words, the analogy here is flawed. You are looking at exactly the same kind of activity at DOD, but are excluded from looking at the CIA.

Mr. BOWSHER. Yes.

Mr. FAZIO. So your credibility is blasted in one area, you shouldn't be looking at either, or you should be looking at both.

Mr. BOWSHER. What we do, like at the national security agencies, we have all the files we keep right out there. We keep all people cleared right out there.

Mr. FAZIO. They are specialists?

Mr. BOWSHER. They are specialists, and we have never had a security problem.

Mr. SOCOLAR. I think we ought to make clear that this results from a difference of the interpretation of the underlying statutes. Mr. FAZIO. An interpretation that has never been resolved.

Mr. SOCOLAR. That is correct. I was just going to say that the CIA interprets the National Security Act of 1947 as excluding GAO. We don't agree with their interpretation. But as a practical matter, we have never been able to get in.

ACCESS TO NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCIES

Mr. FAZIO. So the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is, you know, an analogous agency, has learned to live with you and deal with you.

Mr. BOWSHER. Yes.

Mr. Fazio. CIA refuses to do that.

Mr. BOWSHER. Yes.

Mr. SOCOLAR. You know, it is not totally one way or the other. Occasionally, we can get into the CIA for some information, but it is at their sufferances and for relatively minor issues that come up in the context of something related to our reviews at Defense or other agencies.

Mr. BOWSHER. But in my 10 years, as far as looking at the CIA operations

Mr. SOCOLAR. No, we do not.

Mr. FAZIO. A lot of people think the CIA is all covert activity and spies. It is probably only, 5 percent of their budget?

Mr. BOWSHER. I think in some years it might be less than that. Mr. FAZIO. Yes. I mean it is often their bureaucracy of analysts studying facts about countries we are concerned with, with very similar backgrounds as the people working in GAO.