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Committee are a massive problem. To a large degree the committee must rely on the work of the other liaison committees and on the members of the community themselves. Its problem is a classic government dilemma: The overseers must depend on those they oversee for much of the information necessary for regulation. The Forty Committee usually acts as a ratifier of policy "suggestions" sent to it by those it supervises. It is like the farmer depending on the fox to help him guard the chickens.
    The Forty Committee can also initiate policy. It must act through a system composed of jealously guarded bureaucratic empires. Even on those rare occasions when all the members of the community are working together, the fragmented authority of the agencies is a major obstacle. For example, if an American scientist spies on this country while employed by NASA then defects to Russia and continues his spying based out of France , which American agency is responsible for his neutralization? The FBI, since he began his activities under its jurisdiction, or the CIA, since he shifted to activities under its purview? In an area where petty bureaucratic rivalries escalate into open confrontations obscuring the original mission, such questions take on major import.
    Shortly after it was formed, the Forty Committee tried to solve the problems of internal information and fragmented authority. Forty established a small special security section, a section with no identity save for that of the staff of the Forty Committee. The special section officially maintains an "informal" existence. The section is not shown on any organizational chart. The original Forty hoped this, "informer” status would keep the special staff group free of Parkinson's inexorable bureaucratic laws. Their successors on Forty still cling to that hope, although time and events have greatly eroded their optimistic base.
    The special section's duties include liaison work, and the director of the special section serves on a liaison board composed of leading staff members from all intelligence agencies. The liaison board is usually referred to as Staff Liaison Board. The director has the power to arbitrate jurisdictional disputes, although his decisions are subject to review by the Forty Committee and the DCL The special section also has the responsibility of independently evaluating all the information given to the Forty Committee by the intelligence community. But most important, the special section is given the power to perform "such necessary security function as extraordinary circumstances might dictate, subject to Group [the Forty Committee] regulation.
    To help the special section perform its duties, the Forty Committee assigned a small staff to the section chief and allows him to draw on other major security and intelligence groups for further personnel and authority.
    Forty knows it has created a potential problem. The special section could follow the natural tendency of most government organizations and grow in size and awkwardness, thereby becoming a part of the problem it was created to solve. The special section, small though it is, has tremendous power as well as tremendous potential. A small mistake by the section could be a problem of great magnitude. Forty supervises its creation cautiously. Forty keeps a firm check on any bureaucratic growth potentials in the section, carefully reviews its activities, keeps the operational work of the section at a bare minimum and places only extraordinary men in charge of the section.
    The American intelligence community underwent a reorganization in the early days of the Nixon Administration, with the CIA's divisions being renamed and reshuffled. Basically everything remained the same. One of the changes, a change fought by the staff director of the Forty Committee, was that the special staff received a name: Liaison Group, often abbreviated as L or L Group. The staff director, who relished the many benefits of being a minister with