"I am deeply disturbed that just when this administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight," Mr. Leahy said, "it cannot produce the necessary information."

Yet all along, the profession has resisted meaningful oversight.

"This makes it absolutely clear that the board has no meaningful oversight of Grune," she said.

But the Administration has ignored all efforts to conduct meaningful oversight.

This system of helter-skelter enforcement, critics say, has no meaningful oversight and no appeal process.

Mr. McLaughlin, though, said plenty of meaningful federal oversight existed.

Neither Mr. Annan nor his top aides exercised meaningful oversight, for example, over the oil-for-food program.

She said, "Real and meaningful oversight has taken a back seat to partisan inaction.

But the new plan would scrap virtually all standards and prohibit Washington from exercising any meaningful oversight.

We are cavalier with the public's health and privacy rather than provide meaningful oversight of new genetic and computer technologies.