Hughes–Ryan Amendment

[3] 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 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 on covert military operations in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam in the early 1970s.