From 1787 until 1975, the nation’s policymakers viewed their spy agencies as an exception to the “auxiliary precautions” (checks and balances) successfully advocated by James Madison at the Constitutional Convention.

This exception would lead to an abuse of power. In 1974, a domestic spy scandal, carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency and exposed by the New York Times, challenged this intelligence exceptionalism and brought the espionage services into the framework of government accountability that has been a hallmark of America’s democracy.

In 1975, the Church Committee — led by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, for whom I served as an aide — uncovered CIA espionage operations directed against anti-Vietnam War protesters (Operation Chaos); covert schemes perpetrated by the FBI to ruin the lives of these protesters and of individuals involved in the civil rights movement (Operation CoIntelPro); and National Security Agency wiretapping of the telephones of American citizens (Operation Minaret) and the reading of their international cables (Operation Shamrock).

At the end of its inquiry, the Church Committee was able to create a permanent standing committee for intelligence accountability, known as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The next year, the House followed suit, establishing the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. And with the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980, the executive branch was required to report to Congress, not only on covert actions, but also on all other significant intelligence activities prior to their implementation. This was a powerful standard of ante facto reporting. With these changes, lawmakers became genuine partners in the intelligence domain, just as the Constitution had prescribed for every other policy pursuit.

Since then, the vigor and success of congressional accountability over intelligence activities has fluctuated, with high points during the Jimmy Carter years. There were several low points: the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan administration, followed by NSA violations of the law (including the collection of social media metadata and the use of warrantless wiretaps against U.S. citizens), and the CIA’s adoption of a torture program after the 9/11 attacks.

Still, the difference in accountability between the pre-Church Committee era of benign neglect toward the nation’s secret agencies and these post-committee problems was as stark as night and day. With the Trump administration, though, intelligence accountability has encountered serious setbacks.

This moment is a good time to think about the fundamental ingredients for the success of spy accountability, of which there are two. Unfortunately, both ingredients are often in short supply.

The first requirement for effective intelligence accountability is that the executive branch and its intelligence apparatus embrace the concept in good faith — an acknowledgment that constitutional principles apply to the veiled agencies of government, too. Lawmakers know about intelligence activities only to the extent that the president and the attorney general, plus the nation’s intelligence chiefs — the director of national intelligence and the director of the CIA, and other intelligence agency managers — keep them informed.

Even this basic requirement is often absent. A vivid illustration occurred during the Church Committee inquiry, when a Defense Department truck delivered reams of documents to the panel’s guarded doorstep at the Dirksen Office Building. The problem was, as the department well knew and the committee soon found out, the mountain of papers was merely a gimcrack, devoid of a single useful paper. For the Defense Department, stonewalling was the name of the game as it single-mindedly obstructed the committee at every turn. More recently, the second Bush administration waved off congressional concern by assuring the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the CIA’s torture tactics involved merely a bit of “tummy slapping.” In fact, the CIA was engaged in widespread waterboarding and other cruel interrogation methods.

That’s another reminder of the vitality of the second ingredient for successful intelligence accountability: the will of individual members of Congress to engage in meaningful examination of spy programs. That requires aggressiveness. One former special assistant to the director of central intelligence urged the 9/11 Commission to pursue its investigative responsibilities with a “helicopter-raids-at-dawn, break-down-the-doors, kick-their-rear-ends sort of operation.”

Unfortunately, oversight is rarely like that. The truth is that most lawmakers on the Senate and House intelligence committees rarely even make it to executive-session hearings, let alone conduct helicopter raids on the CIA or the NSA. Only about one-third of the total Senate and House intelligence committees members participated in executive-session hearings during recent years, according to my interviews with committee staff.

Ultimately, it is incumbent upon all Americans to take a more active role in demanding the protection of this nation’s fundamental constitutional liberties, electing only those who vow to take intelligence accountability seriously.

Loch K. Johnson, regents professor of international affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, is author of “Spy Watching” (Oxford University Press, 2018). To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters.