At the time, none of us in Congress could have conceived of U.S. ports being sold to a company controlled by the government of the United Arab Emirates. But because of somewhat related issues, we did manage to put into place a system for analyzing and – if necessary – preventing such transactions from taking place.

More than a decade before the September 11, 2001, attacks, Senator Exon of Nebraska and I sponsored legislation that created a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, to look into foreign acquisition of entities that could be of importance to the nation’s security.

The measure, which became part of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, was inspired by concerns of the U. S. military that foreign companies and countries were acquiring this nation’s technology to such an extent that our emerging high tech defense capability could be compromised.

In particular, efforts by the Japanese firm, Fujitsu Ltd., to acquire Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation and Japan’s overall dominance of the semi-conductor industry prompted fears that our military would be functional only with the concurrence of another nation’s computer chip industry. Congress acted so as to ensure that commercial interests did not trump national security concerns.

The current situation with regard to Dubai Ports World managing operations at major ports in our country is an example of a good law being thwarted by congressional inattention. The Exon-Florio act set up a comprehensive and workable process for CFIUS to gather facts and make recommendations to the president.

CFIUS consists of a 12-member review panel headed by the secretary of the Treasury, and including representatives of such federal agencies as the Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security. The process calls for an initial 30-day period to conduct a review of the proposed transaction to determine whether it poses a potential risk to national security. If there is none, CFIUS can approve the transaction on its own.

If the panel feels it needs further, more complete risk assessment, an additional 45-day full investigation is required. The results of such an investigation are required to be sent to the president for approval or rejection. The intent of this law was to ensure on matters of this importance that the president would be kept in the loop and not – as was the case here – to learn about the matter by reading about it in the newspapers. The president is required to inform Congress of his decision.

Of course, a statutory system is only as good as the people in charge of implementing it. In the current port case, apparently, CFIUS inexplicably concluded that the transaction did not merit investigation and submission of its decision to the president. We cannot authoritatively know how CFIUS arrived at that decision because its deliberations are classified.

That the subject of port security and this transaction did not merit investigation is perplexing, in that port security is already acknowledged as the weakest link in the nation’s security efforts against threats of terrorism. A recent Coast Guard study concluded that 66 ports of our national system of 359 ports are particularly vulnerable to attack by terrorist forces. Yet only 5% of cargo containers arriving from overseas are inspected.

It may be, upon full investigation of the DPW transaction, that the nation will be satisfied with the security ramifications of the deal. It certainly, however, rises to the level of importance to merit full diligent scrutiny. Not only did that not happen in this case, but it appears that cavalier treatment of such reviews are the order of the day for CFIUS.

Of more than 1,500 foreign company acquisitions of companies raising national security or defense concerns, only one was rejected. Only 12 were fully investigated and referred to the president. In light of this less than aggressive record in such an important area, there is a need to fix responsibility.

Congress is charged with passing laws and appropriating the money to carry out these laws. Congress alone has an equally important set of responsibilities known as oversight. That entails reviewing past laws to see that they are carried out diligently and evaluating expenditures to see that tax dollars are spent correctly.

It is clear from everyone’s astonishment as this issue has played out that the oversight function has failed. Leadership in Congress and in the White House has been asleep at the switch in monitoring the CFIUS process. That must change as a matter of national security.

Equally troubling, this oversight failure is part of a pattern that has emerged over the past five years in which congressional watchdogs have become administration lapdogs. The separation of powers set out in the Constitution was designed to ensure congressional accountability on executive branch agencies – from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Federal Trade Commission, from the Federal Communications Commission to the Occupational Health and Safety Agency. But this has simply not been the case.

Maybe from this traumatic port security incident something good will emerge and people once again will be held accountable.

Mr. Florio is the former governor of New Jersey.