But when the agency was disclosed as a "rogue elephant" that assassinated foreign politicians and spied on domestic dissidents, the lawmakers adopted a series of measures to insure the agency's accountability to both the President and Congress.

The Saudi Government contends that the Dhahran bombing was not the work of domestic dissidents.

This time, under pressure from the Bush administration and from domestic dissidents to get serious about democracy, the Arab potentates were unable to agree even on a way to mark time.

They disclosed domestic intelligence efforts, which included a covert action program that operated from 1956 to 1971 against domestic organizations and, eventually, domestic dissidents.

The worst abuses were chronicled by the Senate's Church committee in the mid-1970's amid revulsion over revelations of foreign assassination plots and spying on domestic dissidents.

But it is also obliged to insist that Baghdad comply with the cease-fire resolution's arms control requirements and stop intimidating neighboring states and domestic dissidents.

That dichotomy broke down under pressure from domestic dissidents and, at crucial moments, pressure from the United States.

More persuasive is its criticism of the perennial pressures from the White House for spying on domestic dissidents.

The trouble was that one country believed in freedom and the other believed in throwing domestic dissidents into the gulag and building an iron curtain to keep everyone else in line.

Morally and politically these governments have given their domestic dissidents the right to kill them.