In the long tradition of democratic governance, the power to wage war and the power to oversee it have always existed in uneasy tension. Representative Jason Crow's public disclosure that Congress has been excluded from briefings on a Pentagon leak investigation — one that subjected senior military commanders to polygraph tests — raises a question as old as republics themselves: who watches those who guard the nation's secrets? The episode, rooted in media reports about munitions depletion during the Iran conflict, illuminates a widening gap between an executive branch that frames secrecy as s