Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On The History And Legacy Of The Church Committee 20240621

Historians hosted this 90minute discussion at their annual meeting in st. Louis. We will go ahead and get started since the moment has arrived and others may trickle in after lunch. My name is beverly gage. Im a history professor at gail and i will be here mostly chairing and timekeeping and asking some questions, but before i introduce the panelists , i just wanted to say a few words about the genesis of this panel, the idea behind it, and some of the issues i hope we will be able to address. This year, 2015, marks the audience anniversary of one of the most important congressional committees, certainly, of the 1970s, and i think arguably of the latter half of the 20th century, and that was the Church Committee. The Church Committee was chaired by idaho Senator Frank Church and the committee began its work in the spring of 1975, and the Church Committee held hearings performed investigations, dug into Background Materials on the American Intelligence Services this was the first mass scale investigation of what has been going on and american intelligence practices in the past 30 years, but arguably back even further than that. The Church Committee held hearings investigating the fbi and cia in particular, but also other Intelligence Services such as the nsa, military intelligence, and some of the smaller agencies that were involved in intelligence activities as well. Our job up here is to think a little bit about what some of the causes and consequences of the Church Committee hearings were, to think a little bit about their relationship to the politics of the 1970s, particularly to watergate, to what is often described as the investigative impulse of the 1970s, to some of the power struggles between congress and the executive branch, so where did the committee come from . Why did it come about at the particular moment that it did . As i said, it was really the first largescale investigation of what it was american intelligence agencies had been doing in the latter half of the 20th century at that point, so we wanted to talk about what some of the causes of the Church Committee were. We want to talk about what some of the consequences of the Church Committee work for the intelligence establishment, for politics in washington. Many reforms came out of the Church Committee hearing, some of which made a great deal of difference, others of which did not make so much of a difference at all, and there were some hopes about the significance of the changes that were made that came out of the Church Committee as well there were some dashed hopes about the significance of the changes that came out of the Church Committee as well. I should note the Pike Committee, so there was a similar investigation going on in the house that is somewhat less wellknown during these years, and its reports were suppressed and finally released in the sort of left wing press in the late 1970s, but maybe we want to talk a little bit about the pike smitty as well. The Pike Committee as well. Two other issues im hoping we can get him to have a little bit to do with the present day the practice of history. We have questions about the causes of the Church Committee. Why did this happen when it happened . Some of its consequences for american politics. But i think there are also a lot of evolving questions about the records that are available are not available from the Church Committee. Many of the executive sessions of the Church Committee and many of the materials are still not accessible to historianss. So it hink kate think kate scott will talk more about where we are in the process. What history might we yet learn from the Church Committee . We also want to talk about how it might linked up with the present day. There are a lot of calls of the moment in the wake of Edward Snowdens exposes of the National Security agency for a new Church Committee. Do we want a new Church Committee . Is that a desirable outcome . What would be learned . So, hopefully, we will get to all of this. I also want to say a few things about the composition of the panel as i introduce our panelists. I was member of the oah Program Committee and was charged with organizing some panels related to the kind of work i do in political and intelligence history. Im currently writing a biography of j. Edgar hoover. So, if you notice there is a kind of fbi centric line up here, that is entirely my doing because these are the people that i wanted to hear from. But the Church Committee got a lot into the cia, too. Maybe well talk a bit about that. Maybe we will not. But in putting the panel together, i had a couple of priorities beyond my own interest in hearing from this particular group. One, i wanted to talk to historians who were working within the federal government and outside of the federal government. And i also wanted to try to get a couple of generations together on the panel to talk about how our memories and experiences of the Church Committee have in fact changed over time. Im grateful to the panelists for agreeing to do this. They are going to speak in the order in which they are seated. I will introduce them all individually in a moment. They are going to speak relatively briefly, give formal remarks about 10 minutes each. And then, since this is a roundtable, we will hopefully have a bunch of time left over for interchange. I should note the session is the being taped by cspan. Everything that is said is being recorded a properly enough for the panel. Will be disseminated to the world. There will be a historical record of what is said here. As you ask questions that means two things one, know that. And two, we are going to ask only get to the q a that you go up to the microphone so that the recording equipment in back can capture what you have to say. So now to introduce our panelists, we will move quickly through the lineup. They said they are going to speaking in the order in which they are seated. Laura is a professor of history at the university of california. She specializes in legal history. And i was hoping that she would participate in this panel because of her most recent book right star rising. There is a lot of work being done on the 1970s right now. But professors book is one of the best books in attempting to really integrate what is happening in the postwatergate moment into a larger narrative of american politics in that very transitional period. So, we are hoping she will be able to provide some political context for the Church Committee. Next we have ethen harris who for anyone who studies the history of the fbi is a very wellknown man. He is the dean of fbi studies in our country. And anybody who studies the fbi owes him a massive debt of gratitude. Myself included. Ethan has not only written dozens of books about the fbi and its history but has been really instrumental in acquiring huge volumes of fbi files, and patiently, patiently awaiting freedom of information act request to be fulfilled. And those records for all of us are now available at marquette university. It is just a wonderful repository. And a great contribution to American History. Kate scott, or Catherine Scott is here. She is an assistant historian in the Senate Historical office. And is one of our great experts on congressional committees and how they operated. So she is going to be talking some about the senate and what the Church Committee meant within the senate and its operations related to a series of other committees that were investigating a hole for id of other things in the 1970s, including the presidency investigating a whole variety of other things in the 1970s. She will talk about new work being done on the Church Committee from within the Senate Historical office to she is the author of reining in the state. And finally, we have john foxx who is the historian of the fbi. Who works at the fbi and has written a great deal on the fbis history. Anything you read on the fbi website has been written by john foxx or supervised by john foxx of your reading about the history of the fbi. Hes also written a number of terrific articles about the history of the fbi, the internal policy, and can give us some of the fbis own perspective on what the Church Committee means 40 years out. So, with that we will start with professor calman. And hopefully will hear from all of you soon, too. Laura ill focus on two questions. What was the relationship between watergate and the Church Committee, and whose interests did the Church Committee serve . Recall that was sparked the Church Committee was hirschs christmas 1974 New York Times story that during the nixon years the cia created a massive, illegal Domestic Intelligence operation against the antiwar left, which some linked to the houston plan of watergate fame. Additionally, hirsch said, a check of the cias files ordered by James Schlesinger showed dozens of others illegal activities inside the United States dating back to the 1950s. The hirsch revelations went far beyond watergate. And on the one hand, you can argue that watergate made establishment of the Church Committee less likely. As catherine homestead stresses many reporters in december 1974 who were still reeling from their role in bringing down nixon ran away from hirschs story. They worried about altogether eradicating trust in government. And igniting a backlash against the media. Many disliked hirsch. And remained grouped by the old National Security mistake that traditionally led the press and congress to shield the cia. Consequently, hirschs resolved to carry the watergate mentality into the postwatergate era discomfited other reporters. And after the watergate trauma americans were burned out on politics. Indeed, in many ways, it is unsettling how little contemporary public anger the Church Committee provokes. On the other hand, watergate made the establishment of the Church Committee more likely by leading first two congressional reassertion. Has the story appeared before 1974, the senate would have tasked john stennis with investigating it, not a special committee. Second, watergate promoted investigative reporting and fanned journalistic rivalries. Many reporters may have hesitated to take on the secret government, but hirsch show that just one could do a lot of damage. And he received loads of encouragement from Abe Rosenthal in part because of rosenthals annoyance that the Washington Post had scooped the times on watergate. Hirsch is like a puppy that is not house broken. But as long as he is pissing on bill bradleys carpet, let him go ahead. The post went after the fbi and revealed that J Edgar Hoover kept files on everyone. So now it was not just the cia that needed investigation but also the fbi. Third, watergate led nixon to get rid of the cia director. A very effective keeper of agency secrets. When helms resisted nixons efforts to involve cia and the coverup, nixon got his revenge on the agency by replacing helms with James Schlesinger. And his second command ordered cia insiders to disclose their activities in violation of the cias legislative charter. That led to the amassing of what the agency referred to as the skeletons and the media called the family jewels, that 693 page documentation of cia this deeds that hirsch began exposing. What nixon replaced schlesinger with colby he turned over control to someone who helms believed was all too willing to sing about the skeletons to reporters, the Church Committee, and president ford. Had there been no watergate, helms would have stayed on at the cia stonewalled and the agencys skeletons mightve stayed in the closet. Fourth, watergate led to the ford presidency. When the hirsch allegations broke, ford listens to dick cheney who advised him to try heading off a congressional inquiry by naming a blueribbon National Security establishment Investigative Committee headed by Vice President nelson rockefeller. Ford justified the Rockefeller Commission to New York Times editors by stressing the need to appoint responsible people and restrict the scope of the investigation. The skeletons, he said, included evidence of cia assassination plots against foreign leaders and their disclosure would blacken the name of every president back to harry truman. Was ford blurting out what lawyers call an excited utterance . Or was he engaged in a calculated move to blacken the name of democrats along with republicans . Whatever his motivation, it was a monumental leak. Gripped by the National Security mystique that helped explain the medias cool reaction to the hirsch story, the times did not printed. The news ford worried about exposure of assassination plots was passed to daniel short who predictably broadcasted it on tv. So now it was not just the cia in actions inside the United States and the fbi that cried out for investigation. But cia assassination plots, too. Now the media had to chase the story. And of course the senate and house decided they had to investigate the Intelligence Community. The house investigation, the Pike Committee selfdestructive. But i think we owe a lot to the Senate Committee headed by frank church, a liberal democrat. With his eye and the president ial nomination. Yes church showboating by posing with a dart gun. He got bogged down and assassinations and he seemed to absolve president s when he speculated the cia had behaved like a rogue elephant rampaging out of control. Perhaps, too, he shouldve stood up more to the white house, the Intelligence Committee community and its senate defenders. But especially given the amnesia that affected so many summoned before the Church Committee as johnson observed in his wonderful history and memoir of the Church Committee. Everyone safe colby. Churchs committee brought many cia, fbi, and nsa abuses to light. I am not so sure, though, that the Church Committee resulted in significantly improved oversight of the Intelligence Community. Yes, it cost creation of the senate and house Intelligence Committees. But we need only look to the 1980s to see what mike conley did about the agencys mining of nicaraguan harbors. Beyond leading to the executive order prohibiting the cia from political assassination, the series had not changed cia operations or undercut the assumption that information about enemies must sometimes be acquired illegally. If anything, arguably the Church Committee became whipping boy. Defenders blamed everything from the 1975 murder of the cia Richard Welch on the Church Committee to 9 11 on the Church Committees emasculation of intelligence agencies. Colbys successor bush i complained in 2005 that in 1975, congress disastersly unleashed a bunch of untutored jerks against the cia. He ate the limited and temporary impact of the jer he ignored the temporary impact of the jerks. The fbi also had little to fear from congress. Sure, the Church Committee documented hoovers campaign of harassment against the left. But hoover died in 1972. Since he had been the bureaus director for 40 years, it was easy to believe that no one would ever again possesses power. So congress enacted no legislative charter for the fbi. The way was open for reagan to unleash it along with the cia. The nsa also emerged from the year of intelligence unscathed. Though the Church Committee revealed that it monitor thousands of peoples and organizations, phone calls and telegrams. The hearings did lead to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which required the nsa to obtain warrants from a new foreign Intelligence Surveillance court for eavesdropping on those suspected of contact with foreign powers and terrorist organizations. The Court Received hundreds of warrant applications and never rejected one before 2001. Some supervision. When we learn that bush ii circumvented the court after 9 11, some were nonplussed. As Church Committee member Walter Mondale said, there is disappointed and anger that we are back where we started from. That is not in conclusion to downplay the very considerable achievements of the Church Committee. In this conference about taboos it is appropriate to focus on the Church Committee, because it exposed so many surveillance abuses and pierced the veil of secrecy that hung over the National Security establishment. I admire harris, johnson, Fao Schwarz Jr and other committee veterans who cite post9 11 surveillance abuses as reasons for a 21st century Church Committee. But what if congress stirred itself to create one . History does not repeat itself but as mark twain may or may not have said, history does often rhyme. The Church Committee may have provided just enough exposure of past abuses, just enough comfort that they were history to allow the continuation of business as usual. Thank you. [applause] ethan i think i am the parochial person on the panel in the sense that i will speak not as an fbi historian but someone who is appointed one of those jerks that she referred to as a consultant to the Church Committee in 1975. My appointment was to research the white housefbi relationship it president ial libraries. And the catalyst to this was a function of records that the committee had obtained. Im going to focus my remarks on the fbi. That suggested the fbi at times operated as the intelligence arm of the white house, and thus it is interesting to see and understand the nature of that relationship. But there was a certain other aspect of that, and that is the degree to which the fbi seem to be an Autonomous Agency that acted, contract to the interests of the president. It seemed that researching president ial librarys would extend the committees ability to deal with the problem that led to its creation in the first place. I dont want to emphasize my importance, but in a sense i should note that it was rather minor. But i would like to comment on my experience. It does provide insight into a question that i think laura addressed how do we understand the impact of the committee . We can understand the impact at least in terms of one of the committees principal recommendation she referred to and that is for congress to enact legislative charters for the intelligence agencies. To takeaway from the president and the bureaucracies the authority to decide the scope and nature of their activities. The failure to enact those charters did mean that president s and Intelligence Agency officials continue to exercise, admittedly reduced but considerable authority in establishing the nature of intelligence policy. It was sort of captured in the campaign of Ronald Reagan for the presidency in 1980. The need to unleash the intelligence agencies. And his election marks the end of any possibility of the enactment of legislative charters. The question is if the Church Committee, and i think some of you have read its hearings reports, conducted this unprecedented investigation having unprecedented access to formally secret record, why was it its discoveries did not have that kind of impact that would lead to the restriction that i think was essential given what it found out in 1975 . I would like to discuss three factors. I think the first problem the committee confronted was a lack of foundation. Because the records of these agencies were secret, the fbi had not turned over a single page of its records dating from its creation in 1908 to the National Archives. Fbi officials discovered that copies of fbi reports were already deposited in the National Archives and that state department, they succeeded in having those drawn from circulation. The most notable was the diaries where morgenthal had his secretary transcribed his phone conversations, including with the fbi director, and fbi memos were discussed and policy matters, all of those were withdrawn from circulation. In a sense, we began with a very limited understanding of the actual nature of the fbis history. So, to the extent that you begin, how do you identify the kind of records to give a full understanding of the way the bureau had operated in the 20th century, or at least in the latter decades after the 1940s . Because the records were not available and because you had a very stringent classification restriction. So that when i went to president ial libraries. The first two i went to, i had not received a security clearance. I could only see unclassified records. In one sense, how do you understand what records were relative relevant if you do not understand the way the bureau operated, and how can you understand what they were doing it the more significant records were classified . What i discovered, that human library, in a sense was the truman library. We did not begin with the Roosevelt Libra because the head of the Agency Task Force has conducted research at the Roosevelt Library and review this massive collection of fbi reports of the roosevelt administration. There were similar records in the truman period. Now, some of those records for classified but what those records did establish was the degree to which the fbi volunteered information or ac responsivet to requests from the president for essentially political informationed that enable the present to flush and effectively. To function effectively. When i went to the Eisenhower Library and i fbi reports of the white house, i was advised that was one folder consisting of 10 documents, all of which were classified. So, if you analyze that, you can say liberal president s were willing to abuse the fbi for political purposes. But a conservative president who believed in law and order was committed to restraining the fbi to operate in a way that it should operate as a Law Enforcement agency. When i returned to the Eisenhower Library in december of 1975 with a security clearance, what i discovered was a massive, far more extensive than either truman or roosevelt, and what is even more interesting is that whereas you could not conclude from the truman and roosevelt what action the president had taken or even the president was aware, these were far more comprehensive and revealing records. What the problem the Church Committee confronted was how did it identify records and how could one Research Records that would provide insights into the way the Intelligence Committee committees operated . I would be one of those that would affirm the value of the Church Committee. What we uncovered was a limited understanding of the way these agencies operated. A second factor and im only talking from this perspective of a worm within the apple, a minor 1 was the response they had as researcher at president ial libraries. The problem for this from the point of view of the administration is the Church Committee was engaged in very difficult negotiations with the white house in terms of access to records. They were long discussions. The real problem from the point of the view of the administration, the case of henry kissinger, of having historians turned loose and having access to classified records, you control what they saw in washington. But if you are allowed someone to go to classified records at president ial library is, what would be the consequences . So while very early on, i obtained a security clearance, i could not research classified records at president ial libraries without authorization from the white house. The Committee Staff decided after about a couple months i went in the summer to the truman and eisenhower that i should go to the Johnson Library, even though i did not have security clearance. Once i arrived, i was supposed to call the committee and tell them i was there. Which i did. They said to the white house you have been sitting on our request for authorization. We have this researcher at the library. And so, what worked out was this very cumbersome relationship. I had to identify classified records i wanted to see. And then i could not take notes. Those records would be photocopied and sent to the white house. The white house would decide whether or not to turn them over to the committee. The problem with this is that when you go through records at libraries, you do not know what the nature of some of these programs are, and you have this overclassification of records that i had to make these kinds of judgments, which i think my worst Research Experience was in the Johnson Library. That these might be the classified records i wanted to look at. In some respects, they were based on the fact the committee had, through its research at fbi files in washington, come across programs and issues and time frames. In a sense i made certain guesses about the classified records that might be relevant. The archivist at the Johnson Library advised me that kissinger was opposed to the fact that what had happened at president ial libraries and those who had worked at president ial libraries with classified records, there is a sheet that indicates the name of the individual, the receipt, and the date. Henry kissinger thought that was giving up too much information. [laughter] dr. Thoeharis what i found out is the vast majority of the classified records i singled out to be able to review were simply garbage. I could not simply understand why these were classified in the first was, and why they were classified by the 1970s. I dont think i did a very good job in uncovering information that would be valuable to the committee and trying to understand the relationship between the Johnson White house and the fbi. This was a oneshot approval, so i was not able to go to president ial libraries. Fortunately, William Safire wrote a column criticizing the Church Committee for defending the kennedy administration. The Committee Staff goes to the white house and says we are being beaten up, we are not allowed to do research at the kennedy library. So they made the same arrangement, i had to identify classified records, but in this case, it was far more valuable because while i didnt think i came across anything of significance in the president ial records aspect of this, the records of the attorney general because he was a brother of the president , was far more valuable and that added Background Information that was valuable to the committee. I did add to the back the Background Information of the committee. Having been allowed to research two democratic president s, the committee asked to see the information from eisenhower, which i ended up doing in 1975. One problem i think was classification restrictions and limited understanding, and there was the role of the Ford Administration in trying it to restrict the committees possibility of identifying pieces of interest. And the third and final fact it relates to the limited cooperation that the fbi provided to the committee. Let me cite some examples. The committee, in its review of who was officially confidential files, came across this black folder. There was a procedure established in 1942 for authorization of a black bag jobs. In a sense, what this memo established is between 19421966, the fbi conducted domestic security, black bag jobs, and they begin by saying these are clearly illegal. And you could not obtain the authorization of the attorney general. Here you have the fia the fbi doing its own thing. It was committing clearly illegal activities. The Committee Requests from the fbi information on the target of black bag jobs. This is between 1942 in 1966. The fbi responded that there was no index, file, or document, and because they were unable to answer specifically what the committee requested, but based on the review of records at fbi headquarters and recollections of fbi officials, the fbi conducted during this time, 239 breakins involving 15 organizations occurred. If you evaluate that, that would suggest that the fbi had used this with great restraint and had used black bag jobs with respect to legitimate National Security targets, communist officials and suspected communist agents. It turns out the fbi was not being forthright with the committee, because unbeknown to the fbi officials this time and discovered in march of 1976, the head of the new york fbi office, john malone, got a massive file of records recording fbi breakins conducted by the new york office between 19541973. Reviewing these records, i think this is a conservative estimate. The fbi from 1954 to 1973 in new york alone, conducted over 200 breakins involving over 300 different individuals from different organizations. The basis for that imprecision is because of the surreptitious entries files, as it has been known specifically, was massively redacted on its release, so it was difficult to ascertain information. Because it is redacted, you cant tell if two memos involve two different organizations or a repetition of that. But it gives an insight into the scope of fbi break in activities. The socialist Workers Party had brought suit in 1973 against the government because of a disclosure of it being one of the targets of the fbi program. And at the same time, they brought suit of violation of constitutional rights. They have the release of the houston plan that explodes that expose a series of plans that would be conducted like wiretaps, bugs, breakins, etc. , soap attorneys for the s w p requested all records related to wiretapping and breakins. The u. S. Attorneys responded conceding that they had conducted breakins based upon assurances that the fbi, but they denied there were any break in. This led u. S. Attorneys to advise the court and admitted that the fbi had in fact broken into swp offices. 94 times. During the course of the trial in self, based on review of the extent of fbi records, that number proved to be limited. There was a concession that in new york alone, there was 208 breakins involving swp offices and residents and members. As well as breakins in detroit, newark, chicago, milwaukee, and boston offices as well, as well as los angeles and in hampton, connecticut. You learned about the policy but essentially what you have. Reflected in these records is the indiscriminate nature, relatively, of fbi break in operations. That these operations continued after 1936, which raised questions about hoovers order banning breakins, which raises a whole series of questions about the nature of fbi operations. The second file that the fbi did not provide to the Church Committee was this massive security electronic surveillance index. The fbi assigned symbol numbers to its sources as a means of safeguarding their identity. In the case of sensitive sources, there is an asterisk. The civil number consists of the acronym of an office, and then an asterisk would indicate and what the index would establish is the target of the fbi breakins, the name of the organizations and the individuals, and the day of installation and termination and i am going to end soon so what you have here is a tremendous finding aid and it wouldve been helpful to the committee to be able to look into specific case files and to ascertain why a tap or a bug was established, what information was obtained, and what use is that information. To summarize since i have gone beyond my time, what was not ascertained by the Church Committee was why the fbi did this, and it would have establish the value and the necessity for stringent restrictions imposed by congress and not by the executive branch. In a sense, while i think the Church Committee did a very good job in terms of relative history, it failed to establish the kind of record that could have ensured the kind of reforms that i think its a limited findings of 1975 established. [applause] dr. Scott thank you, my name is kate scott, and i work at the Senate Historical office. I think in part to answer everlys point to talk about this lesserknown Pike Committee, i think we havent done a sufficient job answering this, and why was the Senate Investigation more successful than the house inquiries . I will speak to those and also i want to begin by saying something about a project i have been working on in the past year. About 15 months ago, i attended a Church Committee panel sponsored by one of the law schools in washington, ec. Dc. When i was in the audience, i soon learned it wasnt panelists speaking about the Church Committee, but there were former staff members, Walter Mondale was also there, but the audience was filled with Church Committee staffers, and they were all very eager to talk. What we do in the Senate Historical office is document history by speaking to long serving senate staff. Because they are the closest to the action, they are the people who staff the committees. We try and catch them typically soon after their retirement to ask them questions about the changes in the institution and what they witnessed during their time there. I had all these Committee Staffers in the audience and they seemed so eager to talk about their experience and they did not have time on the panel i just started passing out my cards and asking if i could follow up with some World History with them. With some oral history with them. Over the past 15 months, that is what i have been doing. Now the collection totals 16 individuals, one of them is Walter Mondale, the other 15 are Senate Staffers on the committee. I am thinking now i should ask athan since he is here if you would like to participate. I can speak comfortably about them today, knowing that this material will be released probably in the fall of this year, in part to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the creation of this committee. I am going to use some of the material from those interviews to explore some questions that we havent done a decent job of exploring as scholars. Even though we have had 40 years of very good scholarship there are still some things i think particularly from my perspective as an institutional historian, that we would like to know more of out, and that is what we are going to be talking about today. To this point of the senate and the culture of the if we want to 1970s, talk about the long history of the Church Committee, we have to go before that. Senator Mike Mansfield was the first senator in the 1950s to support a resolution asking his colleagues to establish a special investigation of the cia specifically. This really becomes Mike Mansfields pet project in the next couple of years. Sometimes we have to play the long game in politics. Mike mansfield was patient and he waited and he waited until just the right moment until he had bipartisan support for such an investigation. By 1975, that investigation goes far beyond the cia. Really is sparked by evidence that these intelligence activities are happening in the United States, they are domestic surveillance programs, and they are happening within a variety of federal institutions. But more importantly, to this point about the late 1960s and early 1970s in the u. S. Senate we really have to look at this as beverly suggested, as a time of there is a deep impulse within the senate of the 1970s of inquiry and oversight. A recognition by democrats, and importantly, and i think this is something we need to do a header a better job of telling of republicans and moderate republicans saying that congress has been derelict in its duty and has not exercised effective or consistent oversight over these many years, these decades now, of the growth of the Intelligence Community, and that Congress Needs to reassert its prerogative. So, why does this happen in 1975 . We know that her story so well. If we go back even a couple of more years, beyond seymour hersh, we know this is happening in a very deliberate way in the u. S. Senate. It really lays the groundwork for the Church Committee. The first one is something i have written about in my look, and that is a Domestic Army surveillance program. Really important, it is significant that it is done and handled very carefully, very intelligently by conservative democrat sam ervin, because he will go on to chair the Watergate Committee. That certainly lays the groundwork. I wanted to point to the fact too that some of his staff later go on to serve on the watergate and the Church Committees. So i think that one thing we can do a better job of doing is remembering some of these untutored little jerks are actually not little jerks. They have not only senate experience, but they have particular investigation experience on these very sensitive issues related to National Security. That is going to be so important to the way as to not only how the Church Committee rolls out but also how the senate rolls it out because the senate will have to later consider these recommendations. So you have a guy, one of the people that i have interviewed who worked for senator ervin had a lot agree, he served in the, i believe he was in the marines, and senator ervin really liked his profile. So he came and worked on the investigation into Domestic Army surveillance, and he was actually the principal author on the final report on the investigation. And then you have maryland republican charles mathias, who was a moderate republican, very well respected by his peers, and in 1971, he calls for a special inquiry. He says, weve got this problem, this expansion of the war in southeast asia, weve got to stop, but we cant, because the administration is calling on these 150 year old Emergency Powers drawing upon civil war era Emergency Powers to fund these military efforts, so matthias says weve got to do something about this. Congress needs to act. On the request of a republican senator during a republican president ial administration, we create, the senate creates, this committee. It is a littleknown committee it is known as the special committee to terminate the national emergency. What they did for four years, i dont believe they concluded their efforts until 1975 during the Church Committee, but during those four years, they were looking into the statutes that the president ss had used over the years and that congress had approved and that president s had used over the years and that congress had approved. They amassed a list of over 400 statutes. This granted president s, both democrat and republican, extraordinary powers. Congress has been derelict and has not revoked these powers over the 150 years. So youve got people, youve got this great combination of things going on, youve got republicans saying that this has to stop. John sherman cooper, one of the sponsors of the church commandment is asking this, and more about working on trying to reassert Congressional Authority and prerogative in these areas. And important to note, on this committee to terminate national emergency, there are two chairs, frank church is one of the chairs, but his cochair, that title grants special powers to the minority members, and it is mack matthias. And mac matthias goes on to serve in the Church Committee in the church himself as the chairman. Two things i am trying to get on is the scope of the oversight and investigation and secondly it is very much a republican and democratic effort, and we have often overlooked that and it deserves further exploration. Second, and this speaks to really what both laura and ethan had mentioned, and it is the enormity of the task. They are tasked with this extraordinary task. So where do you begin . That was really one of the questions that i post to one of the people of whom i interviewed, where do you begin . How do you start . What did you do . The great thing wise, and the connection to the Institutional Knowledge many of these folks , had served on these other committees. Britt snider knew where to look for some of the Army Surveillance stuff, and one actually ends up being tasked with tracking no such agency, or the nsa. When we handle some of our questions at the end maybe we , can handle the legacy with the nsa and maybe some mixed results. I would also like to say that literally nobody knew about this agency in 1975, so that in itself is deserving of recognition. Britt snider is one of the fellows working on these things, and you have another couple people whom i have interviewed who worked on the Watergate Committee, one of them was howard bakers Legal Counsel on watergate and served as his Legal Counsel on the Church Committee. Youve got another woman who worked in the Research Center for both the watergate and the Church Committee investigations. If you think about it kate, you have two minutes. Dr. Scott thank you, and the Watergate Committee sets up a really careful security apparatus. They hire security to come in and to guard these documents and the use the same type of arrangement as when they initiate the Church Committee inquiry. So the senate has this experience with managing and controlling documents and information, and it has done it responsibly. The house doesnt have the same kind of experience. And so i think that does help explain, in some ways, the differences between the senate and house investigations. There is a lot there that we can pack and explore. Let me just conclude with a couple of questions i would like us to consider moving forward as scholars, as a community of people who still care deeply about this stuff. How do we evaluate institutional outcomes 40 years later . I think we need to know more about the institution in order to appreciate the legislative outcomes. And i think that the two should all component is something that is lacking in our scholarship. I have found in doing these oral histories that the creation of the Senate Oversight committee was not a foregone conclusion at all by any means, which i thought was fascinating, and i am definitely going to be exploring that further. There were powerful individuals in the senate, you can imagine who those people were, and that tells us something about both the historic moment that allows for the Church Committee investigation but also about the limitations of that investigation and we always need to be mindful of that. Another point that comes up in the interviews is that howard baker actually wanted a joint committee, he wanted a joint intelligence oversight committee, but because of what happened in the house, that is just something that was not going to happen. I think we need to pay more attention to the vibrant floor debate as the house and senate are considering these legislative possibilities after the Church Committee investigation, because it does tell us a lot about the pushes and the polls among democrats and republicans. Remember, these are less homogenous political groups at this time. You have conservatives and liberals in both parties so i , think we need to pay more attention literally to what the lawmakers are saying about their objections to this legislation in order to understand 40 years later. Maybe fisa doesnt work so well. We need to understand that moment when fisa is born better so we need to understand that moment in order to understand how we might need to approach revisions in the future. I will leave it there and we will do questions later. Thank you. [applause] dr. Fox i do have to make a bit of a caveat, these are my views of the fbi, and if there is any doubt of that, they hired me, so at least they made a good choice, i hope. What i would like to do and i think this is what beverly wanted me to talk about and this is the impact on the fbi. To do that, i think i need to cover a little bit about before all this was going on. Because of course you may get a hint at it, but my colleagues certainly talked about things that would have an impact on changing the fbi, regardless of whether the Church Committee ever happened. Then i would like to talk about what the Church Committee intended to do, what they did, and of course, what they recommended should be done. If you seen especially book 2 of the final report about Domestic Intelligence in the u. S. , they make some 96 suggestions. So there is quite a little bit that they wanted to see done. Then we can talk about how that came to the present and how that impacted the fbi and whether those changes are permanent or not or whether they were effective. Obviously i have some opinions there and i have happy to share them. So, with that said, the early 1970s, the fbi was in a state of significant change. Hoover had just died, 1970 two 1972, may 2. He had been the director for 40 years. He was the institution both for , good and bad, and you could tell that the questioning of hoovers reign had come about. You had the breakin and hundreds of documents stolen in a breakin and revealed publicly for the first time a codename a reporter from nbc asked the fbi what it was and got a reply of it was a very Sensitive Program and we are not going to say anything more about it, so he sued. Over the next couple of years, revelations about what coin tell pro were started to drip out. The Justice Department was forced to commit its own investigation about it and that also leads to significant changes in the way that fbi the way that the fbi handles that and the freedom of information act. In 1974, we have Seymour Hershs article, that laura talked about. We had the Senate Committee address the problems within the Intelligence Community, and within a month, Senate Resolution 21 is passed, and the committee is asked with looking at the illegal, improper, or unethical activities within the intelligence agencies, especially with regard to domestic americans. What are they doing at home . If we look at the next couple of months, of course, the public look at it seems to focus more on the cia. Not a lot seems to come out about the fbi at the time. Church was immediately selected as the head, and within a day or two, he was telling the New York Times that the new Senate Subcommittee would target the fbi and other information gathering agencies, having exceeded the statutory limits on their authority. We are going to balance the rights of the people and to see if any transgressions have taken place. I think fred schwartz, the council, in commenting on his recent book that just came out vowed that the purpose of the committee was seen at the main job as exposing illegal and embarrassing secrets to build momentum for reform. So weve kind of got both of these things going on. On the one hand, church, of course, is saying we still need an Intelligence Community and we are still going to need one. But it has done some wrong things and we have to figure out what those are and we have to correct that so it does not happen again. Obviously, a laudatory goal. How does the administration look at this . The fbi, of course, over january, february, march, begins compiling documentation. It has never been good at looking at its own history. You didnt have a historian. It didnt have a historical program. As far as the last historical monograph that had been written of the fbi, it was the history of its special Intelligence Service during world war ii, which ended in 1947. So, self reflection was not one of our strong points. [laughter] the administration was concerned. U. S. State Department Just put out something on the Church Committee. Regrettably, i have only found out about it this week. Clearly, the administration was concerned. How do we deal with this . What are we going to do . Secretary kissinger was worried about whether the nsa was going to take a big hit. Deputy attorney general silverman commented and said the fbi may be the sexiest part of this. We will put the bureau would look to dribble it out. This will divert attention. This relates only to illegal activity. Obviously, they were starting to consider, how do we deal with this . Like washington is in politics what part of the story do you tell . How often do you tell it . Why do you tell it . What is going to happen of it . In november of 1975, the Committee First turned publicly to the fbi. It had already done a lot of background interviews. It had been collecting documents. The questions had been limited. They asked about the kennedy assassination. They asked sam coppage, our liaison to the cia for years about fbicia relationships. By the time that the november hearings come around, the focus is coined tell probe. The attorney generals report comes out. The fbi has been forced to reduce that release documents under the freedom of information act. That was a first. The fbi prior to that had not released information. It considered itself exempt because of various reasons, and the courts were beginning to say no. In fact, we were already involved in a number of suits related to the freedom of information act, as well as in relation to some of our earlier surveillance practices that had been coming out in relation to the watergate hearings. One young girl had sued us because the fbi opened her mail that she sent to the socialist Workers Party for a school project. They wanted her file purged. We were being sued by the socialist Workers Party at that point for some of the investigations that have been done. Of course, many of the actions have been taken against the socialist Workers Party. That was in there. Of course, if meant a lot of discovery in court. All these things are going on even as church is interrupting. Of course, one of the Bureau Officials who was questioned was a man named William Sullivan who during the 1960s was a senior fbi official. He eventually got thrown out of the bureau. He was involved in sending a package of tapes of fbi surveillance of dr. King to the family house, along with letter that beverly has written about suggesting that king should get out of the business. Some people have taken it as a suicide note. Regardless, it was obviously over and above anything the fbi should have been connected to. Of course, had it come out during hoovers day, hoover should have been fired regardless whether he was protected over the years, but when it came out in the mid70s, it did a lot to affect the reputation of the fbi. Political abuse in other words, working especially with next and and johnson over the nixon and johnson over the years had come out. Unjustified intelligence investigations at the Church Committee signaled out, and a number of administrative things. Fbi records practices and certain investigative practices were all focused on in these hearings. If you look at the actual published hearings, volume six on the fbi is the thickest of the bunch, and it has a lot of fbi documents. These are things that people have never seen before, and the fbi considered its records sacrosanct, whether it was a typewriter receipt. We just bought this typewriter. Or it was, we just broke into the socialist Workers Party and found these documents. The Church Committee was airing hoovers dirty laundry, but it went beyond that. It touched on what the fbi had done all through those years. So, the next year, 1976, the Church Committee is supposed to report. They end up taking a number of extensions. The report ends up coming out in late april. When it is released, the impact doesnt seem to appear right away. One New York Times reporter suggests it came in with a big wave of scandal and news conferences and people really chomping at the bit to get at these intelligence agencies and the abuses, and it is going out with more of a whimper here. Yet if we look at their recommendations, if we look at the report, i think there is something deeper there. The Committee Said that it found actions by the Intelligence Community and other Government Entities had infringed on the rights and liberties of americans. Even incidentally, fear of Domestic Intelligence, it suggested, had an impact on the way people exercised their First Amendment rights and was a worrying thing. Not just direct action but even knowledge of that has an impact. So, the committee made 96 recommendations, more than half of which were directly aimed at the fbi. In general, they had a couple principles in making these recommendations. They said action that directly infringes on First Amendment rights has to be prohibited. They saw cointelpro in this light. They wanted the government where it did things that might have an impact on someones First Amendment rights, a collateral impact, to use a means test, much like the Supreme Court First Amendment decisions. It had to show a compelling government need, had to minimize the impact. Of course, they wanted procedural safeguards, things like higher officials, attorney generals, the president signing off of these things. They wanted congressional notification. This was very key in the issue of covert action, especially with the cia. Congressional notification was to be key. Congress would play a role. This is where i diverge a little bit from my fellow panelists. The lack of oversight, i think had to do with the inherent understanding of the role of intelligence and executive power. The problem in the 1960s is the intelligence practices were simply being aimed abroad. They never completely were. Intelligence practices have been used in america against american citizens for many years before that, but it really came to a fore because of the radicalization of antiwar and civil rights movements and the governments overreaction because of the turn to violence in some of those movements. We had the emergence of the weather underground. People simply arent burning draft cards. They are throwing bombs. This change has focused us here at home, here in america, and that is why the fbi really comes to the fore in these things. So im giving you your twominute warning. Thank you. The Church Committee is not supposed to say, no domestic investigations, but rather that they need to be limited. So, is the fbi limited . Well, not by legislative charter. That is the biggest proposal coming out of this. The effects of the charter do come through attorney general guidelines. Those guidelines have carried through. They are a Public Statement of how the fbi should work. Does it perfectly follow them . Obviously not. There have been obvious reports over the years at the guidelines have been tweaked because of policy issues, but overall, it is a permanent feature of how the fbi does business. That is a significant change. Fisa, i think, is another one. For years, the general suction have been foreign intelligence electronic surveillance is an issue of executive authority. Thats it. Now we have court oversight. Where church was concerned about checks and balances, those are starting to come in. And the creation of a Permanent Senate Intelligence Committee is another check. The fact that we have regular hearings, the fact that the Intelligence Community is called for irancontra, the fbi is called to the carpet for the investigation into the committee for solidarity with the people of el salvador, suggest changes. These are things that didnt happen before 1976, but they are things that happen now. Fbi agents were prosecuted for breakins, and two of them were convicted, mark phelps and william miller. That is a change. Fbi agents hadnt been convicted for those things before. And so on. I think the Church Committee though it didnt get what it wanted, it did affect many of the changes that it was looking for. In a sense, its not business as usual, but sometimes it does rhyme with it. [applause] thank you to the panelists, and i think we can open this up. We have about 15 minutes left for q and a. For those of you who came in late, i will remind you that we are being recorded by cspan. Anything that you say will go out on broadcast. For that reason, i would also ask, as our first participant is doing as a model, that you go to the microphone for your questions. Ive got many questions, but i will limit myself to two. First of all, kate, i was wondering if you could talk about whether this moment how does this moment fit into our sense of the senate as as consisting of four Political Parties . Youve got the northern and southern wing of the Democratic Party and republican party. Is this the last her rock were last moment of this model that exists in the senate . My question to you, laura specifically, how did the 1974 electoral results and the watergate babies coming into congress does that have any part in this particular story, or are they separate from it . Thank you. Dr. Scott thank you. To the question of, is this the last i dont know if i would think about it that way in terms of conservative republicans and democrats, liberal republicans and democrats. Again, i will just go back to the composition. If we go back to the composition of the committee, its fascinating who the two leaders select. Mansfield and the republican from pennsylvania, they choose the Committee Membership runs the political spectrum. Youve got your liberals and your conservatives, but you also have some folks who arent easily defined, especially on these issues. Someone ive spent a lot of time exploring the contributions of richard speicher, the republican of pennsylvania. He was a moderate republican. He was incredibly influential in pushing some of the issues particularly on budgets. Lets make sure that these budgets are known. They shouldnt be hidden. We should understand them. That should be part of the constitutional process. Max matthias is another one. Howard baker. I dont know if i see their regional identities in this case as important as i see the moderates doing a lot of work, and the moderates, i think, are actually the majority of the Committee Rather than the liberals or the conservatives. We know that goldwater and tower had these minority views, but in the course of interviewing staff who worked for republicans staff who worked for democrats staff who were self identify as republicans or democrats, they said they thought tower and goldwater did a decent job. They werent particularly engaged as many of the other members were, but that they certainly didnt try and stand in the way. If you look at any Senate Investigation, and you look in the appendix, you are going to find most of the time, there is a minority view appended to that report. It is a common practice. I think maybe we have stressed that too much. We know that one of towers staffers sort of worked to try to limit the investigation curtis smothers. Unfortunately, he has passed away, so i cant ask him what his work was like or what he was tasked to do. Likewise senator towers past. Senator towers passed. But i think that if we look at the committees makeup, we can learn a lot about a moment in the senate when there was a real bipartisan effort to change something that was very significant that had a large impact on american society. Professor kalman my sense is that the watergate babies were more important in the house than in the senate. I think kate reminds us how much of the impetus for the Church Committee precedes watergate and how bipartisan the impulse was. I think thats really important. I think what is interesting about watergate is that it may be added to the impetus for reform for people like baker and its really important to remember how bipartisan the effort was, but also that things were passed in the fall of 1974 even before the story, like the hughes riot amendment, which required the president to report covert activities. They were really, in substance more important, arguably, then anything that the Church Committee came up with. Watergates relationship to all of this is complex. [indiscernible] this was a great panel. I learned a lot from this. I was somewhat surprised to hear the emphasis on how little actually changed because of the church commission, how Little Things actually changed or the limited of facts. In some ways, many of you would say that, and then he would backtrack and list a number of things that happened. I wondered whether this panel might have had different conclusions about the impact of the Church Committee had been speaking in 1998. Im wondering, in the post9 11 world, how much of these things are creeping back in . A different way of asking the question might be, how is the Church Committee like and unlike the more recent torture report . Just looking at those different issues, it seems like there were some changes for a while, and maybe there werent, and then maybe there were some backtracks. I would love to hear your perspective on that issue. Let me take that question. Ive got to push the button. I think the issue that the Church Committee posed was, what should be the limits, and who should define the limits of the intelligence agencies . That is why i focused on legislative charters. What the legislative charter proposal says is, if you take this out of the exclusive authority of the president because you cant trust the president and intelligence agencies not to abuse power. The basis for the two examples like it at the end directly address that. I think it was a factor in the failure to have that impact. If one looks at the National Security electronic surveillance index file, you have the extensive use of wiretaps and bugs between 1940 and 1968. The fbis installation of bugs is based on the prior review of the attorney general. With certain exceptions, the fbi installed bugs without the authorization of the attorney general. It raises the question, to what extent, if you look at the scope of individuals and organizations that were targets of wiretaps and bugs who was being tapped and bugged, and what legitimate security interests were being advanced . That is an interesting question which was not pursued. If i look at the issue of breakins, the socialist Workers Party was the target of 208 breakins between by seven field offices. It doesnt seem to be a very effective use of the nations resources, and it raises the question, if you give them this kind of discretion, you break in and break in again and find nothing that advances the nations security interest that was the history of the breakins conducted between writing 58 and 1966. Then if you look at the do not file procedure where fbi officials are saying, what we are doing is illegal, and we are going to do a procedure against Discovery One of the best questions was, isnt this a failsafe method . You establish a procedure by which you submit these records. They are not centralized in the fbi record system. Thus, the fbi can respond to a congressional subpoena courtordered discovery motion and say, we searched our records. There is no evidence of illegal conduct. That is not oversight in any sense. It does raise the question, i think, that was posed by the investigation, and that was not the basis for reform to ensure that these abuses were not recur again if you leave it to discretion, even of attorneys general and principled president s. It invites, for very good reasons, the National Interests of defined by a president s intelligence officials to move well beyond what we would consider to be legitimate. Dr. Scott dr. Gage if i could jump in on that to give a slightly more positive view of the Church Committee, i think there are a number of ways of measuring influence, and one of them is particular legislative outcomes, policy outcomes. I think there were real limits there. As john suggested, there is a shift, at least in the state of view of who should be conducting oversight. I think that is one set of questions. In many ways, to me, the much more important outcome of the Church Committee was simply exposing information. Whatever the legislative outcomes were, you really changed what americans knew and what they understood themselves to know about what their intelligence agencies were doing. This is particularly notable in the case of the fbi. You had seen a lot of cracks in the image of someone like J Edgar Hoover certainly before he died and before the Church Committee, but the Church Committee really was the kind of final nail in the coffin of what had been his image for a long time, which was hoover the civil libertarian, hoover, the man who would not abuse his power. This is one of the reputations that kept him in office. There were a lot of people who knew this sort of wasnt true but you have a lot of documentation of that before this moment. In terms of how citizens of imagined what their intelligence agencies were doing and whether or not there needed to be a set of restraints, i think the Church Committee was really transformative in that sense. The last piece that i will throw out i think you also have a kind of generational story which is to say that the reforms that were put in place like fisa, like the Intelligence Committees, were maybe pretty effective or effective in certain ways in their moment as technologies changed, as we ran into the crisis of the post9 11 world, as the intelligence agencies themselves expanded and changed. Those structures havent necessarily kept up so that whatever was put in place in the 1970s is not necessarily what we would want a place where it is not necessarily effective in the world that we live in now. I would also add of course, we are a nation with a threebranch government. The Church Committees impact isnt simply on whether or not the Congress Ends of passing legislation. The Church Committees impact was much broader. Forcing the fbi in a sense to search its closets, forcing the executive branch, especially the department of justice, to own up to more oversight of what the fbi was doing, exposing a number of these issues for the courts to consider and four people, the public, to consider in the brain to the courts this all goes into the freedom of information act, which led to a lot of those suits over the next 40 years all of this was attributable to the revelations of the Church Committee. Even if the politics of the congress do not lead to legislative enactment of all 96 recommendations, does not lead to a massive fbi charter, which was opposed by a number of people in congress, obviously, doesnt mean that it didnt have a big impact in many other ways. That is what i was trying to suggest. Certainly, the fbi does not do business in the same way it did before that. I think i would have sounded less despairing in 1998, but based on my readings of historians like johnson and olmsted who have written about the Church Committee in the 1980s and 1990s, i think i wouldve come to a pretty similar conclusion in terms of its impact on policy outcomes. That said, i wouldnt want to deny the fact that the Church Committee is a huge deal. Who do you think the nsa was before the Church Committee . That said, im a little disappointed that the fbi building is named after J Edgar Hoover. [laughter] [inaudible] i think the Church Committee investigation was a monumental achievement for the u. S. Senate. It was a change in a lot of ways. I would add that congress often does its best work when it is serving as a National Forum on issues of importance. In this case, some of these things that were discussed and brought out and perhaps not discussed at every level of society these real constitutional questions we are still grappling with today, the fact that they were discussed for a whole year, 1975 1976 is a big deal. We ought to not overlook that despite what we might see as limited legislative achievement. I just wanted to make that point. Is there anyone else who wants to weigh in in these last two minutes . All right. Thank you very much for coming out. Thank you to all the panelists for participating in this fascinating discussion. [applause] youre watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation like us on facebook at cspan history. American history tv is featuring cspans original series, first ladies, influence and image at 8 00 p. M. Eastern time on sunday nights throughout the rest of the year. Cspan produced the series in cooperation with the White House Historical organization. We tell the stories of americas 45 first ladies. Now circle, margaret taylor, a