History is filled with examples of law enforcement and intelligence officials overreaching during moments of perceived national security crisis. In the 1970s, the Church Committe investigated both the F.B.I. and C.I.A. for spying on the political activities of Americans during the Vietnam War. These investigations led to the creation of oversight mechanisms: the F.B.I., for example, has benefited from Congressional oversight and a robust inspector general who has uncovered a number of illegalities in the F.B.I.’s counterterrorism programs.

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The above is from a dispatch on the op-ed page of the New York Times by two lawyers of the Brennan Center at New York University. The lawyers, Faiza Patel and Elizabeth Goitein, are writing about the controversy in respect of the showings in New York Police Department training sessions of a film called “The Third Jihad.” The film is being characterized as hostile to Muslims generally. Mmes. Patel and Goitein reckon it’s time to police the New York Police Department and subject it to “effective oversight.”

If the Church Committee is what they have in mind, it strikes us that recent history undercuts their argument. The reference is to the select committee, headed by Frank Church, that the Democrats set up in the Senate to deal with alleged excesses of the Vietnam era and the Watergate scandal. There is a view that the zealotry of the Church committee and others to reform and oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies that made America less secure and left us more vulnerable to the attacks made on 9/11.

It would be too much to blame the congressional reforms that came out of the Church hearings for the catastrophe of 9/11. But it would not be too much to say that they played a part. This point has been made by, among others, a historian named Stephen Knott, who has written of what he calls “the damage done to the CIA” by the “congressional oversight regime.” The reforms, to list but a few of the things about which he has warned, burdened the agency with a longer list of officials requiring Senate confirmation, prohibited the agency from contacting with various “bad characters,” restricted the agencies involvement in coups, and overwhelmed it with requests for briefings.

The compartmentalization that reforms of the era imposed on our intelligence apparatus has been blamed in part for the failure of our agencies to communicate with one another and to act on early warnings that might have stymied the perpetrators of 9/11 before their plot ripened into an attack. This history stands as a caution to New York City today to avoid the temptation to become so zealous of the abuses some lay to Commission Kelly’s department that they set the stage for trouble years, even decades ahead. Far better to let Mr. Kelly run his department, hire the spokesman he wants, and leave the oversight to the mayor and the voters.

We haven’t seen “The Third Jihad” and don’t know whether it was useful for NYPD officers to have seen it as part of their training. The Sun has no interest – none — in fomenting discrimination against Muslims in our community. We’ve seen in the Jewish community how hurtful are accusations of dual loyalty. We’ve no interest in the tactic. But neither do we have an interest in restricting the NYPD training mission so that officers are exposed to nothing but dainty depictions of the world in which they are going to be operating. The idea that Mr. Kelly erred in even giving an interview to the filmmakers is censorious.

The truth about Commissioner Kelly is that in the whole history of the city he is almost without peer in his ability to guide the department among the contending political factions while maintaining a spirit of both vigilance and respect. That would be true even if his critics were right about almost everything. One would have to go back to Theodore Roosevelt to find his ilk. We are in a period where the logic is to give him not less leeway but more. The biggest challenge for the next mayor is going to be finding, whenever the time comes for Mr. Kelly to retire — and may it be a long time hence — a commissioner who can carry on in his spirit.