Church Committee

Background

By the early years of the 1970s, a series of troubling reports had appeared in the press concerning U.S. intelligence activities. First came revelations by Army intelligence officer Christopher Pyle in January 1970 regarding the US Army's spying on the civilian population in the United States. Senator Sam Ervin's investigations of military surveillance produced further revelations.

Then on December 22, 1974, The New York Times published a lengthy front-page article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh detailing covert activities engaged in by the Central Intelligence Agency under Operation CHAOS to collect information on the political activities of American citizens.

The resulting uproar led to the creation of the Church Committee, which was approved by the Senate on January 27, 1975, on a vote of 82 to 4.

Overview

The Church Committee's final report was published in April 1976 in six books. Also published were seven volumes of Church Committee hearings in the Senate.

Before the release of the final report, the committee also published an interim report titled "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders", which investigated alleged attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of Zaire, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile, and Fidel Castro of Cuba. President Gerald Ford urged the Senate to withhold the report from the public, but failed, and under recommendations and pressure by the committee, Ford issued Executive Order 11905 (ultimately replaced in 1981 by President Reagan's Executive Order 12333) to ban US sanctioned assassinations of foreign leaders.

In addition, the committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but only the one on Chile was released, titled "Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973". The rest were kept secret at CIA's request.

According to a declassified National Security Agency history, the Church Committee also helped to uncover the NSA's Watch List. The information for the list was compiled into the so-called "Rhyming Dictionary" of biographical information, which at its peak held millions of names—thousands of which were US citizens. Some prominent members of this list were Joanne Woodward, Thomas Watson, Walter Mondale, Art Buchwald, Arthur F. Burns, Gregory Peck, Otis G. Pike, Tom Wicker, Whitney Young, Howard Baker, Frank Church, David Dellinger, Ralph Abernathy, and others.

Another revelation of the committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK, in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the Watch List. In 1975, the committee decided to unilaterally declassify the particulars of this operation, against the objections of President Ford's administration.

Together, the Church Committee's reports have been said to constitute the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but over 50,000 pages were declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

Committee members

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Investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy

The commission also carried out an investigation into the November 22, 1963, assassination of John F. Kennedy, questioning 50 witnesses and accessing 3,000 documents. It focused on the actions of the FBI and CIA, and their support for the Warren Commission.

The Church commission raised the question of the possible connection between the plans to assassinate political leaders abroad, particularly in Cuba, and that of the 35th President of the United States.

The Church Commission questioned the processes for obtaining information, blaming federal agencies for failing in their duties and responsibilities and concluding that the investigation into the assassination had been deficient.

It participated in the creation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), the second major investigation of the JFK assassination, from 1976 to 1979.

Opening mail

The Church Committee learned that, beginning in the 1950s, the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation had intercepted, opened and photographed more than 215,000 pieces of mail by the time the program (called "HTLINGUAL") was shut down in 1973. This program was all done under the "mail covers" program (a mail cover is a process by which the government records—without any requirement for a warrant or for notification—all information on the outside of an envelope or package, including the name of the sender and the recipient). The Church report found that the CIA was careful about keeping the United States Postal Service from learning that government agents were opening mail. CIA agents moved mail to a private room to open the mail or in some cases opened envelopes at night after stuffing them in briefcases or in coat pockets to deceive postal officials.{{cite news|first=Mark |last=Benjamin|date=January 5, 2007|title=The government is reading your mail

The Ford administration and the Church Committee

On May 9, 1975, the Church Committee decided to call acting CIA director William Colby. That same day Ford's top advisers (Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Philip W. Buchen, and John Marsh) drafted a recommendation that Colby be authorized to brief only rather than testify, and that he would be told to discuss only the general subject, with details of specific covert actions to be avoided except for realistic hypotheticals. But the Church Committee had full authority to call a hearing and require Colby's testimony. Ford and his top advisers met with Colby to prepare him for the hearing. Colby testified, "These last two months have placed American intelligence in danger. The almost hysterical excitement surrounding any news story mentioning CIA or referring even to a perfectly legitimate activity of CIA has raised a question whether secret intelligence operations can be conducted by the United States."

Results of the investigation

On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, and discussed the NSA, without mentioning it by name:

If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. (...)

I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.}}

Aftermath

As a result of the political pressure created by the revelations of the Church Committee and the Pike Committee investigations, President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905. This executive order banned political assassinations: "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination." Senator Church criticized this move on the ground that any future president could easily set aside or change this executive order by a further executive order. Further, President Jimmy Carter issued Executive Order 12036, which in some ways expanded Executive Order 11905.

In 1977, the reporter Carl Bernstein wrote an article in the Rolling Stone magazine, stating that the relationship between the CIA and the media was far more extensive than what the Church Committee revealed. Bernstein said that the committee had covered it up, because it would have shown "embarrassing relationships in the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism."

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., editor of the conservative magazine The American Spectator, wrote that the committee "betrayed CIA agents and operations." The committee had not received names, so had none to release, as confirmed by later CIA director George H. W. Bush. However, Senator Jim McClure used the allegation in the 1980 election, when Church was defeated.

The Committee's work has more recently been criticized after the September 11 attacks, for leading to legislation reducing the ability of the CIA to gather human intelligence. In response to such criticism, the chief counsel of the committee, Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., retorted with a book co-authored by Aziz Z. Huq, denouncing the Bush administration's use of 9/11 to make "monarchist claims" that are "unprecedented on this side of the North Atlantic".

In September 2006, the University of Kentucky hosted a forum called "Who's Watching the Spies? Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans", bringing together two Democratic committee members, former Vice President of the United States Walter Mondale and former US Senator Walter "Dee" Huddleston of Kentucky, and Schwarz to discuss the committee's work, its historical impact, and how it pertains to today's society.

References

References

1. (1976). "The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Foreign and Military Intelligence". [[United States Congress]].
2. (August 3, 1977). "Project MKULTRA, The CIA'sProgram Of Research InBehavioral Modification".
3. "Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans – Church Committee final report. II.".
4. (16 May 1973). "The CIA's Family Jewels".
5. (2007-06-26). "A glimpse into the CIA's 'family jewels'". The New York Times.
6. (April 26, 1976). "Church Committee Reports, Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Book I".
7. "U.S. Senate: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities".
8. "Excerpt: "No Place to Hide"".
9. (December 10, 1974). "Military surveillance. Hearings .., Ninety-third Congress, second session, on S. 2318., April 9 and 10, 1974". Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off..
10. Hersh, Seymour. (1974-12-22). "Huge C.I.A. operation reported in U.S. against antiwar forces, other dissidents in Nixon years". [[The New York Times]].
11. Prados, John. (2006). "Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA". Ivan R. Dee.
12. (27 January 1975). "S.Res.21 - 94th Congress (1975-1976): Resolved, to establish a select committee of the Senate to conduct an investigation and study of governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities.". www.congress.gov.
13. Prados, John. (2006). "Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA". Ivan R. Dee.
14. Church Committee. (20 November 1975). "Alleged assassination plots involving foreign leaders".
15. Prados, John. (2006). "Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA". Ivan R. Dee.
16. Church Committee. (1975). "Covert Action in Chile: 1963-1973".
17. "National Security Agency Tracking of U.S. Citizens – "Questionable Practices" from 1960s & 1970s". National Security Archive.
18. US Senate Representatives, Select Committee to study governmental operations with respect to intelligencde agencies. (April 26, 1976). "Book Five - The Investigation of the Assassination of President of John F. Kennedy". US Government Office Publications.
19. Mary Ferrel Foundation. (4 March 2023). "House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)".
20. Prados, John. (2006). "Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby". Oxford University Press.
21. (September 2011). "The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby". Act 4 Entertainment.
22. (August 18, 1975). "The Intelligence Gathering Debate". [[NBC]].
23. Bamford, James. (13 September 2011). "Post-September 11, NSA 'enemies' include us". [[Politico]].
24. Andrew, Christopher (February 1995), "For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush," (1 ed., HarperCollins), p. 434
25. Annie Jacobsen, "Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins," (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019), p. 226
26. Bernstein, Carl. "THE CIA AND THE MEDIA".
27. Knott, Stephen F. (November 4, 2001). "Congressional Oversight and the Crippling of the CIA". [[History News Network]].
28. Mooney, Chris. (November 5, 2001). "The American Prospect". Back to Church.
29. Burbach, Roger. (October 2003). "State Terrorism and September 11, 1973 & 2001". ZMag.
30. (May 19, 2002). "Debate: Bush's handling of terror clues". [[CNN]].
31. (2007). "Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror". New Press.
32. (September 14, 2006). "UK Hosts Historical Reunion of Members of Church Committee". University of Kentucky News.