Remember Frank Church? Spurred on by damming articles by Seymour Hersh that documented activities by the CIA against both American citizens and foreign governments deemed to be unfriendly, Congress decided to form a committee and engage in a radical notion. That radical notion was known as "oversight." There was a general sense that just maybe Congress ought to know just a little bit more about what intelligence agencies were doing in the name of America. In the immediate post Nixon era, there was also a suspicion on the part of the American public that unchecked power might just interfere a smidgen with the workings of democracy. Americans were a bit cranky. I wish Americans were just a little more cranky right now. Happy Americans are for the most part malleable ones. The state of contentment is not a good one for democracy.
The Church Committee was a Cecil B Demille sized effort to get a comprehensive overview of intelligence activities. Ironically enough, a historical document from the Senate calls the effort unfocused and asserts that the public was less than enthusiastic about critiquing the CIA after an assassination of a bureau chief in Greece. What this document calls "unfocused" was actually a sweeping and comprehensive attempt to analyze intelligence activities in a way that had never been attempted before. The idea that any intelligence agency or agencies might be challenged or scrutinized was a pretty foreign one. Seems it might still be that way. After all what is more democratic or more anti-authoritarian than the idea that intelligence agencies might need a leash? I suppose the peoples are just too unsophisticated to be granted such power vis a vis Congress.
Summarizing all of the contents would be impossible in one diary. Bottom line: if you annoyed post WWII American governments enough you might have been subject to a probe or purposeful action. I am speaking about American citizens.Things weren't much better if you happened to be an annoying foreigner. Apparently there were plenty of annoying foreigners. The Church committee came to a rather wacky conclusion killing annoying foreigners wasn't very nice and maybe the US should refrain from doing so. Of course, the CIA wasn't just randomly selecting annoying foreigners to plot against, as the links show there were a few favorites. Executive Order 11905 ruined all that fun assassination stuff for the CIA. Reagan appeared to simply re-state that position with as thisCNN summary notes. This intriguing document clearly outlines that there is plenty of "wiggle room" to allow for such acts if the US is defending itself against bad people/terrorists. I suspect the folks who get to kill the bad people also get to define who qualifies as such. Neat, huh?
I would hate for true and patriotic American citizens to think that they were neglected by the Church Commission, it turns out that they were not. Americans got plenty of attention from various intelligence agencies. Mail was opened, files were created with the kindly assistance of the IRS, those pesky feminists were subject to scrutiny, MLK got a long look, those ungrateful student activists were examined, even a few
less than cooperative politicians were subject to scrutiny.
Why bother? That was then and this is now, right? We want to throw the bums out, a few of us even want to push for impeachment. Why clutter our already heavy agenda with more hearings? Raw Story raised this issue with some public figures. Fredrick A.O. Schwartz Jr. who was a contributor to the Church Committee thought the idea had merit.He has a new book out that might be worth a read. One of Frank Church's staff members at the time thinks that a Neo-Church Committee part two is not worth while because the public is not clamoring for it. I suspect most of the American public might have simply forgotten that there even was a Church Committee. They need to be reminded. Then we need to find our new Frank Church and let him or her delve into the salad bar of abuse and power mongering perpetuated by the intelligence agencies that has run unchecked all justified in the in the name of the "war on terror." Individual case by case hearings on the various transgressions of the Bush administration are needed and ongoing but they aren't enough. Impeachment is just a starting point. Congress must wrap all of these abuses up in one package the way Frank Church tried to do. The ACLU has invoked The Church Committee numerous times to oppose government attempts to revise FISA, which was created in response to those investigations,oppose relaxing domestic spying and a host of other charming Bush administration ant-terrorist justifications.
Here is an extensive look at the man and his career. Church lost his re-election bid in 1980. 1980 ushered in the brand new era of feel good, American self-congratulation and love, we aren't gonna take it no more patriotism from the dubiously divine Reagan. Interesting: just a few years later we had a set of hearings about what so called patriots and Presidents do when they just feel like it. Of course, since nobody could remember who talked to who about what and where the substance of those hearings faded away and made a few nice careers for the participants.