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To anchor an evaluation of the recent Republican party-dominated Congress requires a longer lens, looking back to other periods like it. On a scale of political cynicism, how does the Congress of 2001 to 2006 stack up against these prior wartime Congresses? The most appropriate prior periods are both to be found in the Cold War period up to 1968, as this covers wartime responsibilities assumed by both wings of the political establishment. This includes the last elected branch monopoly the Republican party achieved, and the lead-up to it. That monopoly took until 1953 to build, and that quickly burned itself out by 1955. The last wartime Democratic monopoly on elected branches lasted from John Kennedy's inauguration in 1961 up until Lyndon Johnson's decision not to compete in the 1968 election. The low-points are well known - McCarthyism and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution - but the details are worth revisiting with parallels in mind.As to the Bush Congress, most commentary has split between two camps of opinion: Either the current Congress has abdicated on oversight, or Congress is exercising restraint appropriate to wartime. When it comes to answering the question, "How does oversight work?," the critics say, "It doesn't," or, "There isn't a straightforward answer." But a closer look at the pressures that have led to some oversight leadership by Congress during the Bush years suggests a stronger answer to that question: Oversight's path can rarely BE straightforward. Congress has few available means of piercing the veil of bureaucratic secrecy crafted around national security operations, and the oversight issues that legislators can make stick just ARE serendipitous. But as in previous legislative "insurgencies" during single-party dominant eras, there is a pattern to effective oversight: Just as important as the scandal that gives traction to oversight is accumulating over time a public trail of evidence about what oversight jurisdictions are being stonewalled on the President's behalf by fellow members in Congress. The President's party works hand in hand with a number of gatekeepers around Congress, and the legislative opposition has difficulties bringing to the public's attention the record of those responsible within Congress for ongoing stonewalling. That is to say, the opacity of the Presidency is crucial to understanding the limits of legislative oversight of national security matters, but so is the opacity of the oversight process itself. This essay furnishes a short case study from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]