Congress and national security : interest, influence and speed

• Main Author: Van Hook, Matthew S.
• Other Authors: Knopf, Jeffrey
• Published: Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School 2012
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10945/5415

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited === Both the President and Congress have Constitutional responsibility for the nation's security. The U.S. Congress, like the President, demonstrates both interest and influence over national security affairs. An effective and often overlooked means of determining this interest and influence is to examine Congress's speed of action and the factors that influence this speed. The following five variables affect Congress's speed and provide a useful method of analysis: constituent concern, interest groups, committees and subcommittees, party leadership and presidential leadership. This thesis examines the impact of these variables in two case studies of security agency organizational reform. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 and the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 both represent the fast action of Congress on vital national security problems. Though the effects of particular variables differed in the two cases, this study concludes that Congress does not need a mystical aligning of all the stars in order to move fast on an issue of national security. Instead the positive impact of one or two variables combined with the neutrality of the others results in a fast speed of action from Congress on national security affairs.