Both NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander and CIA director Leon Panetta have developed solid relationships with key members and senior Hill staffers, a turnaround from early in the administration, when the CIA nearly went to war with Speaker Nancy Pelosi over whether she was briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques during the Bush Administration.

There remains significant concern about the oversight of other agencies controlled mainly by the Department of Defense, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is one reason for the initial resistance to James Clapper's nomination to become the new director of national intelligence.

Last week, the White House reluctantly agreed to support some of the new provisions, but its budget director pointedly made public concessions the White House had won, including the scrapping of an amendment to give Congress's investigative arm, the General Accountability Office, broad power to investigate intelligence agency abuses.

Earlier this week, I wrote that the oversight language in the authorization seemed weak. I did not know about many of the provisions retained in the language that passed both the House and the Senate, largely because the intelligence committees will not make drafts of the final product public. Moreover, some of the new oversight powers are classified. Congress, for example, has requested modifications to specific programs and capacities.

Others have simply been overlooked. Sen. Kit Bond spent months crafting a provision that would significantly overhaul the way the intelligence community acquires its materiel and handles contracting personnel. An early version of the bill is here,

In negotiations with the White House, Congress stressed President Obama's campaign promise of transparency and a new era of openness in government. The White House, meanwhile, insisted that its executive intelligence authorities and ability to protect national security information not be diminished.

Details from some of the new oversight mechanisms show the strides Congress was able to make.

During the last administration (and, indeed, for decades), covert action notifications were often made orally, with no record of who attended briefings and no record of what the briefings were about. Under the new language, even oral covert action notifications must be recorded for posterity. To avoid a debate about what type of covert action qualifies for notification, agencies are now required to consider more factors when determining whether a program ought to be disclosed. The director of the CIA must sign a document on a regular basis to certify that he has met the notification requirements. Doing so will subject him to 18 USC 1001, the False Statements Statue, and potential legal penalties if he fails to disclose an important program that is discovered after the fact.