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In reply to the discussion: Does the President fear the CIA? [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)14. NSA spied on Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) in 1976.
Frank Church was a patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American. The guy also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he definitely knew what he was talking about:
That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesnt matter. There would be no place to hide. 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 dont want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see 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.
-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.
I dont want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see 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.
-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.
And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy:
In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committees responsibility for Welchs death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.
SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1
SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1
From GWU's National Security Archives:
"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.
Newly Declassified History Divulges Names of Prominent Americans Targeted by NSA during Vietnam Era
Declassification Decision by Interagency Panel Releases New Information on the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Panama Canal Negotiations
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 441
Posted September 25, 2013
Originally Posted - November 14, 2008
Edited by Matthew M. Aid and William Burr
Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history. For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. Also startling is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Howard Baker (R-Tennessee).
SNIP...
Another NSA target was Senator Frank Church, who started out as a moderate Vietnam War critic. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Church worried about U.S. intervention in a "political war" that was militarily unwinnable. While Church voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, he later saw his vote as a grave error. In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson made decisions to escalate the war, Church argued that the United States was doing "too much," criticisms that one White House official said were "irresponsible." Church had been one of Johnson's Senate allies but the President was angry with Church and other Senate critics and later suggested that they were under Moscow's influence because of their meetings with Soviet diplomats. In the fall of 1967, Johnson declared that "the major threat we have is from the doves" and ordered FBI security checks on "individuals who wrote letters and telegrams critical of a speech he had recently delivered." In that political climate, it is not surprising that some government officials eventually nominated Church for the watch list.[10]
SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/
I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-CT) also got the treatment from NSA?
I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up. Senator Richard Schweiker on Face the Nation in 1976.
Lost to History NOT
Imagine what the can do with today's computers? Drones, too.
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No. But he fears the backlash if he tries to hold the thugs accountable for their crimes.
Tierra_y_Libertad
Dec 2014
#3
If i were him, i certainly would. Presidents come & go, the cia is here to stay.
spanone
Dec 2014
#6
No, he doesn't fear them. He doesn't fear the CIA or NSA and he doesn't fear the military.
stevenleser
Dec 2014
#10
When the story broke about the CIA spying on Feinstein's select committee, Charlie Pierce
KingCharlemagne
Dec 2014
#71
I edited my post to delete my specific call-out, but yeah, the silence is deafening. They
KingCharlemagne
Dec 2014
#73
I can't help but believe that the CTs make it that much harder to engage in actual reform.
Nuclear Unicorn
Dec 2014
#101
Frank Church was one of the great liberals. He was also one of the group of Senators who were
jwirr
Dec 2014
#102
Thank you Octafish. Funny how some people's reading list can be missing large pieces of truth. n/t
librechik
Dec 2014
#91
You may want to read Bugliosi's Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
zappaman
Dec 2014
#97
He's either afraid, or he's OK with them lying to Congress. You apparently believe it's the latter.
Scuba
Dec 2014
#67
Or they recognize reality isn't as simple as a discussion board wants it to be
Lurks Often
Dec 2014
#31
I agree. It is rotten to the core, has always been, but probably too powerful to dismantle.
northoftheborder
Dec 2014
#62
It would absolve all of them. And, if true, we may as pack it in and take up knitting.
merrily
Dec 2014
#82
Do you think if he was being threatened and came out and said so he would be ignored?
Autumn
Dec 2014
#40
Because no President bothers to control them. When a President who is a Democrat
Autumn
Dec 2014
#49
I would if I were he. But if you listen to a lot of DUers, BHO approves of torture and probably ...
Hekate
Dec 2014
#60
I saw DUers say he said some of the torturers are patriots and I saw DUers say Amnesty
merrily
Dec 2014
#84
I have no doubt. CIA is another beyond control criminal organization.
Dont call me Shirley
Dec 2014
#76
Personally my speculation lately is that retribution would be in the form of a mushroom cloud
hootinholler
Dec 2014
#85