Flashback: A Look Back at the Church Committee’s Investigation into CIA, FBI Misuse of Power
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/24/flashback_a_look_...We take a look at one of the most famous special Senate investigations of government misconduct. In the mid-1970s, a US Senate committee chaired by Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho conducted a massive investigation of the CIA and FBI’s misuse of power at home and abroad. The multi-year investigation examined domestic spying, the CIA’s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, the FBI and CIA’s efforts to infiltrate and disrupt leftist organizations, and more. We speak with Sen. Frank Church’s widow, Bethine Church, and Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr., who served as chief counsel to the Church Committee.
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BETHINE CHURCH:...I think that really we have to really look forward. But I see a chance to have a—not a congressional committee, because there’s too much, you know, partisanship. There’s no way to have a balanced committee like Frank had. He had Goldwater. He had Tower. But they all managed to get along. And Gary Hart, who’s gone on and looked into so many things about our safety ever since then. But I think that if they had a committee outside of the Senate, maybe sort of a truth committee of some sort, I think Fritz Schwarz would agree with me, and a number of people do, that having it all looked at would probably help the country feel better about it.
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AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Fritz Schwarz into this conversation. Reading from an article just going through the period in the early 1970s, the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, the unfolding Watergate scandal, the “series of troubling revelations started to appear in the press concerning intelligence activities. First came the revelations of Christopher Pyle in January 1970 of the U.S. Army’s spying on the civilian population…The dam broke on 22 December 1974, when The New York Times published a lengthy article by Seymour Hersh detailing operations engaged in by the CIA over the years that had been dubbed the ‘family jewels’. Covert action programs involving assassination attempts against foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US citizens.”
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FREDERICK SCHWARZ: Well, both Rumsfeld and Cheney were involved in the Ford White House. And then Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense at the same time as there was a big shake-up, including the firing of Bill Colby, who had been cooperating with us as director of the CIA. And I know more about their role now than I knew at the time. They weren’t people who we saw a lot. We dealt with other people in the White House, but I now know, and America knows generally, that Rumsfeld and then Cheney were people who felt that the—nothing should be known about these secret operations, and there should be as much disruption as possible.
That, I’d like—I’d like to, for a moment, because it’s the same kind of accusation that former Secretary of State James Baker made on the night of 9/11 on ABC-TV, and where he said, in sort of a hush-hush way, to Jennings, Peter Jennings, he said, “Well, the Church Committee caused 9/11.” Now, first place, he had his facts utterly wrong. And second place, it was completely illogical.
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BETHINE CHURCH: When you think of all the things that the Church Committee tried to straighten out and when you think of the terrific secrecy that Cheney and all of these people dealt with—they were always secretive about everything, and they didn’t want anything known—I think people have to know what went on. And that’s why I think an independent committee outside of the Congress that just looked at the whole problem and everything that happened.
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http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/24/flashback_a_look_...
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