Transcripts For CSPAN3 Tom Charles Huston Church Committee Testimony 20160530

Variety of reasons. So the legislative portion of those reviews never reached fruition. There were a number of internal reviews and internal changes that took place as a result of the Church Committee inquiry and later the and that person has to report to kblg about what it finds about what he or she finds to be the problem internally. Kate scott, thank you. Thank you. Our coverage, 40 years later continues. This is American History tv only on cspan 3. 40 years ago they created a committee to look into the u. S. Intelligence services. They had a long title. The Senate Select committee with respect to intelligence activities. It took on the nickname of its chairman and best known to historys the Church Committee. It called 800 witnesses and the legacy includes the Senate Select Intelligence Committee providing ongoing oversight of the intelligence agencies and the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 which we know as fisa. Two former staffers are with us and will be with us to provide context of the 40yearold video you are about to see. Here in our studio in washington is the council to the committee as the dez me in. Thank you for joining us. Lets start with the basics. Will you explain how it got constituted . Most were within the United States written and followed up by many other people. That was in the context of the post watergate hearings and resignation of president nixon by still continuing about the vietnam war and the thought led to public concern and the response between thes en senate and the house overall. It was in that context that you need to place the committee and the response to things that happened and other Political Activities led to the creation of the two committees. What was the mandate or mission as it was constituted . It was to look into the facts and develop the facts and expose them to the American Public. Some people thought we would expose more bat things, but the single most important finding is to say starting with franklin radios velt, everyone one had accused their powers. By making that brought finding which was the most important, it helped with the special cohesion and respected with the national reputation. How were they selected as the chairman and republican vice chair of the committee . Mansfield collected frank church. Phil hart was ill and died of cancer not too long afterwards. Although he served on the committee. The minority leader selected tower. Interestingly of the 11, none of them had been people who were responsible for the prior generation of inadequate oversight of the congress of pcia and the fbi and the other intelligence agency. From having had supposed responsibility earlier and having failed as the congress did to exercise really any oversight of the community before we did our work. I want to read for the audience. And they will recognize. Be sides those who i mentioned, phil hart and walter mondale, Vice President of the United States. Walter hubbleston of kentucky and Robert Norton and harry hart from colorado. Howard baker who went on to be the majority leader. Barry gold water. Charles mathias of maryland and dick shwiker in pennsylvania. How did these 11 big figures get chosen by the respective leaders. What was the thinking in constituting these individuals and what would they expect the outcome to be . I was not privy tow those discussions, but my sense is they chose people who had stature within the institution and within the nation. This would be and they had associated stature of the members. For me it was extraordinary in the sense that it represented a brought spectrum of views from the most conservative to the most liberal at the time. And what fritz said earlier about the desire to make it a unified finding. It was the choice in the chair and the choice of the members. Our program in American History tv will center around video as it must. I wanted to talk to you about the television aspect of these hearings. I mentioned that the subcommittee and full committees met for 16 months and over the course of time, they had 126 full Committee Hearings and 40 subCommittee Hearings. Only a portion of those were before television cameras. What was the strategy regarding television of the hearings . Obviously their own discussions would be confidential, but the first choice was when we investigated the plots to assassinate foreign leaders like castro and other people, there was a discussion about whether those hearings should be public or not. Howard baker who was a very Effective Member of the committee pushed for public hearings and frank church said we are wiser not to have public hearings. This will be the first hearings and you dont want to inadvertently put out stuff that should be kept confidential. Thats the most covert they have ever been. When we got to the domestic hearings, those were all public. The fbi was by far the most important of our domestic hearings and i frankly think overall our most important work was exposing the illegal and Improper Conduct that the fbi under J Edgar Hoover engaged in for decades. Those were all public. The public and of course our reports were public and in the domestic report which was called book two, everything we wanted to put out was put out. In the foreign report, there were some things which were not included in the final report and were available to all 100 senators. In general we had by far the most disclosure of any committee that there ever has been dealing with intelligence either in this country and thats still true to date or in the rest of the world. As a side note on television and the decision, senator baker when he became the majority leader after the election of ronald reagan, the first measure he put in was television at the senate. He was consistent in having them televised. That was a big deal. What was the sense of the hearings. There was a considerable amount because the subject matter was themselves. The relationship between citizens and intelligence. Little was known when we began the meetings of the committee. Nobody knew what to request and how to ask the right questions. What these agencies were doing and how they were doing it. And this was the first time the curtain had been drawn at all. It was inherently interesting for the public. Todays installment on the Church Committee, we will focus on the investigation of something called the houston plan. We will begin by showing you a clip from the hearings. Questioning witness tom charles houston on september 23rd, 1975. Lets watch. You did recommend that the United States should commence as you understood it the illegal opening of mail, is that correct . Yes. My understanding from my contact was the bureau. It was that in the past this had been a technique that was employed particularly in matters relating to espionage and the Intelligence Community intricated they thought it was the necessary technique to be undertaken under extreme circumstances and they felt that they should be authorized to do so. Similarly you also are basing your views on the recommendations of the Intelligence Community except for the footnotes advocated that the United States should commence or recommence to commit burglaries to acquire valuable intelligence information. Is that right . Yes. I was told the bureau had undertaken black bag jobs over a number of years until 1966. It had been successful and valuable again, particularly in members involving espionage and they felt this again was something that given the climate they thought they needed to have the authority to do. Fritz schwartz at work questioning tom houston in 1975. Who was tom houston and what was the houston plan . The houston plan was something that was devised in the white house and with most of the Intelligence Community to get president ial blessing for the illegal and that was for years and years and years. It fizzled out, but the intent was to legalize what had been done and which was illegal. Houston gave us a fantastic quote and i assume somewhere later in that examination i used it. When you start these programs you also have the commission. You go from the kid with the bomb to the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the Bumper Sticker of the opposing candidate and you go from looking at dangerous activity to migrating to looking at the political views of people in this country. Nsa did the same thing. They got every telegram and was given to nsa. At the beginning, their objective was only to look at and in the embassy back to moscow. If houston admitted in the language, there was mission creek. They started looking at the cables of antivietnam war protesters in the United States and civil rights leaders in the United States. They had no business looking at and essential not in an illegal way. Telegrams are in each of the things for many of the younger viewers. Can you say what it would mean today to read every telegram that is leaving the United States . Its easy enough to do that given what happened over the last two or three years after Edward Snowdens revelations. They had access to the meta data with telephone calls and the like. To who was communicating with whom. Thats extraordinary to have if you want to look at activities of the people. It was the same kind of notion. People thought if i scoop up enough of this color, somewhere im going to find important things. Its not the kind of technology that is employed, its a notion that you can sweep everything in and work from that. We are going to see 40 minutes of charles houston, but we would like to show a short clip. This is arizona senator barry gold water and talking about the Internal Revenue service this this clip. Lets watch. I want to speak about the and the bull elephant and liken it to a rattle snake sliding along in the grass. Probably the greatest threat to American Freedom and americans of anything we have and yet this morning as the first indication that the Internal Revenue will be investigated and i think its time. You sat on the republican side and what was the intent of bringing the irs into the investigation. The republican side encompassed the entire range of the political spectrum of the republican party. From mathias to barry gold water and john tower. And the concerns of the republican senators differed astronaut. The irs was just that. A snake and he wanted to make sure that that was part of the investigation and not shunted aside. That was not the case for the priorities for some of the other senators. We have a few minutes before we show 40 full minutes of your questioning for tom charles houston. Particularly significance for people watching today. What is it that you would like people to think about. The American Public should be bothered any time the government exceeds and does so secretly without even the congress knowing what its doing. And so the american citizen should be free of fear that the government and excessive information. We never said that the government shouldnt collect it. The government shouldnt collect information without going through a proper process to develop the right or a judge saying this is legitimate to do so. The irs was a legitimate subject of inquirey and i brought out disturbing facts and again this shows the nonpartisan side. We showed that john kennedy had done things to try to get the irs to go after particular people. We had a quite couldntive witness who was head of the irs. Senator gold water was good on that issue. He was not someone as interested in the rest of the work. I think he was less interested than all the other senators who were profoundly interested and senator gold water first urged we should not investigate the fbis treatment of dr. Martin luther king because if we do that, they will riot. After we discovered that the fbi had tried to get Martin Luther king to commit suicide by sending him a composite tape of recordings taken of king in various hotel rooms, i said to the committee, i had not looked at the tape nor had i let anybody on the staff look at the tape. To do so was not necessary to make our point. Then senator gold water and something i thought was very, very disappointing said i think fritz is wrong. We should get that tape and play it on national television. So im making those comments a little bit in criticism of senator gold water. All the other ten senators i thought constantly worked very hard and were very interested in all our issues. There never was a purely partisan vote. In general there was great cooperation. I regarded myself as chief council for the whole committee and not chief council for the democrats. I felt i was chief council for the whole committee and talking about elliotts senator, senator shwiker. He i think had the best record of any senator of always wanting to do what we thought was the most appropriate thing to do. Thank you for the background and among the committees, they still have a reputation for acting most often in bipartisan. Thats something that has been a context for the committee. At this point thanks to both of you for setting the stage for the houston part of the investigation and we are going to show 40 minutes as they investigate the houston plan and this was televised september 23rd, 1975 by the public broadcasting service, pbs. Lets watch. Did you submit to the president certain recommendations with respect to the restraints on intelligence collection . Yes. Have you got the document from our books some. Yes. Is that the document which you did submit to the president . Which i submitted to mr. Hall. For transmission to the president , is that right . In that document, you make recommendations with respect to changing restraints which you thought had been placed upon intelligence correction, is that right . Yes. In making the recommendations, did you believe you were accept centing the consensus of the working group that had worked on the studies for yourself and for the president . Yes. So whatever recommendations you made with respect to illegal openings of the mail or burglaries or entry were ones that you believe represented the views of the entire Intelligence Community with the exception of the footnotes of mr. Hoover himself . Yes. You did recommend, did you not, that the United States should commence in your view as you understood it or recommence the illegal opening of mail. Is that correct . Yes. My understanding from my contact with the bureau and through the working committee was in the past this had been a technique that had been employed, particularly in matters relating to espionage and professional Intelligence Community indicated they thought it was a necessary technique to be undertaken under extreme circumstances and that they felt they should be authorized to do so. Similarly you also based on your views on the recommendations except for mr. Hoovers footnotes advocated that the United States should commence or recommence to commit burglaries to acquire valuable intelligence information. Is that right . Yes. I told the bureau had undertaken a black bag jobs over a number of years until 1966. It had been successful and valuable in matters involving espionage. They felt that given the revolutionary climate, they thought they needed the authority to do. In both cases, your position and their position was in effect that the end justifies the means. Im not going to speak for what their position is, but i dont think that fairly summarizes my position. Im sure some of the other purposes here are going to question you on that issue. Did president nixon approve the recommendations for change which you made on behalf of the Intelligence Community . Yes. What happened after that . The question arose as to how the decisions were to be implemented. I recommended that i felt that the president ought to call the directors back into his office and for him in person. It seemed to me that that was the proper course to cake particularly in view of the sensitivity of the decisions relative to mr. Hoover. However the president didnt think that was necessary. So then the question became how should a decision memorandum go out. He seemed to think it was not necessary for either he or the president to do that. I was nominated. You sent it out . Yes, i did. Over my signature. This document represented your proposal to the president for lifting oro laxing certain restraints on the Intelligence Community with respect to gathering information on what you called the revolutionary climate. I would suppose that had reference to the antiwar demonstrations and the group. Senator, i was peripherally interested in the antiwar demonstrations and i was concerned about the 40,000 bombings that took place. I was concerned about the 39 Police Officers killed. Yes. And everything connected with that. Thats what im talking about. Revolutionary violence as opposed to antiwar demonstrations. They contained your recommendations for lifting or relaxing certain restraints. Easing restraints. In some cases keeping it. Its lifting or relaxing restraints to accept your recommendation. I take it by legal coverage we had reference on the procedure that enables intelligence agencies and Law Enforcement to look at the envelopes if the procedure is followed. There is a legal way to do that. Then you recommended also present restrictions on covert coverage should be relaxed on selected targets and foreign intelligence and security. Now, here you were referring to opening the mail, were you not . Yes. That was against the law, was it not . Yes. So you were making a serious recommendation to mr. Nixon. You were recommending that he authorized mail openings even though such openings were a violation of the law. Well, i think what was being recommended is that they be employed in spite of the fact that there was a federal law that prohibited. In relationship to both the mail and interest there was electronic surveillance and the whole question as to whether the Fourth Amendment applied to the president in this internal security power. Thats why i earlier said when you asked me about our thinking, i think this is where the question arose. In my mind what we were talking about is something i had been told was done for 25 years. They authorize mail openness even though it was contrary to the stature. You have suggested that there might be some adherent right that circumvents the Fourth Amendment guaranteeing citizens against unusual searches and seizures without a warrant bearing upon the National Security responsibilities. Senator, i think this goes to the heart of the matter and if you recall on the safe streets act, there was a proviso clause that said nothing is to be deemed the power of the president that they may have with respect to the National Security. I think it was that kind of approach to the whole area, the Fourth Amendment rights in terms of National Security that opened the door top those who thought they could go ahead and do it. You yourself suggested this was a very serious question. Yes, sir. You are asking the president to take action that violated the federal statute upon the theory that he had inherent right to do this. Since that is a central question and it goes to the protection offered to american citizens for the Fourth Amendment, did you take the matter up for the attorney general to secure his opinion. No. When you testified earlier in the executive session, you were asked the following question. You were not aware of the fact that at this time, the time you were submitting the recommendation for president , the cia was opening the mail. Mr. Houston, you replied, no. I think one of the more interesting things is why i didnt know half the things i didnt know and the president sat across the table from the intelligence against and said i want a exceed report on whats going on. I didnt know about the cia mail opening and the clientele program. These people were conducting all of these things on their. The president of the United States didnt know about. Do you still stand by that testimony . With exception that i assume i cant be positive the president didnt know if he learned from other sources. I can say that i certainly didnt know about it and it was my responsibility to see that the president knew what was going on. To your knowledge, he did not know. To my knowledge, he did not know. It would have been a serious exercise for him, wouldnt it, to look at your recommendations asking for his authority to open the mail if he knew the practices had been going on. For a long time before his authority was up. Yes. He never raised that with you. No. And five days later when he pulled back and this report or this directive, did he do that for the purpose of revoking the authority that he had given . Yes, because mr. Hoover and attorney general mitchell prevailed on him to change his decision which he did. There was no doubt in my mind or could there have been doubt with the other people involved that the revokation or the recall of the decision meant the reversal of the president s position. The president revoked the authority for such things as that. Yet are you aware that the mail opening continued for a long time after that revokation . I read the Rockefeller Commission report, yes, sir. Senator, i kind of said it down here and created out a cloth and an entire array of new techniques to exploit and the Civil Liberties of the American People and i forced it down his throat and black jacked the admiral and used my heavy weight on all these professional intelligence people and forced them into coming up with all of this. I think the fact of the matter is that the entire Intelligence Community in the summer thought we had a serious crisis in this country. I thought we had a serious crisis. My attitude was we have to do something about it. Who knows what to do about it . Professional Intelligence Community. The community told me this is what you give them and they can solve a problem and i recommended the tools. The thing that is interesting to me about the fact that i didnt know about the mail openings and i didnt know about the program is if we had known that many of the tools that they were asking for permission to use were being used and we were still not getting results, it conceivably would have changed our attitude towards the confidence we were willing to place in the community in dealing with this problem. The first time we talked back in may in the Armed Services committee. I had been out front. The houston plan. I never wrote this report. I didnt write that report. All i wanted to do is i thought we had a serious problem. I wasnt concerned about people who didnt like the war or people who thought nixon was allowed. We were talking about bombers and assassins and snipers. We were i felt something had to be done. Here are the tools we need. I take full responsibility. I recommended it. What you are saying is that the inspiration for the report and most of its aspects in the absence of anything but guidelines by the white house came from the agencies involved . Senator, for example, i never heard of the 6. That means you can have free lunch in the white house and yet its in here as a recommendation. What was your attitude towards the president s decision or the reversal of the decisions that resulted in the rejection of the plan. I thought it was a mistake for certainly reasons. The first reason i thought it was is it put us back to ground zero, not really back in terms of operational techniques, but back to ground in terms of any coordination among the agencies. Secondly, i felt in my own mind that mr. Hoovers objections were not based i thought not all of mr. Hoovers objections had been submitted to the president for what he was concerned about. And thirdly, i was concerned about what effect this would have on the Intelligence Community other than the fbi if they could put their back into the project which was supposed to be a joint effort. They reached a consensus and one person what justification do you have as an attorney as an officer of the court and as a public officer and to entertain and recommend illegal acts. It was my opinion at the time that the exercise of matters relating to the security or National Security. The argument that mr. Justice douglas participated in the court was ruled unconstitutional and the domestic wire tap. Up until 1972, they had so are sa recover sdoench are r r ato wire stab taps, they felt the inherent power. If there is an exception to the Fourth Amendment for surveillance which is a trespass, it doesnt take a lot of imagination to and you are calling it legal to violate rights of citizens if he invoked the National Security. You didnt say that. You said these things are illegal. Which is it . For the purposes that were most relevant at the time, its clearly illegal. It would be fair to say that you understood and hold them and to justify it now, you invoke a National Security defense. Which position is it . You asked me what my opinion is, in consideration that was given by not only me, but by the other people who signed this report, it was frankly within the power of the president to do it. Why didnt you say that . This is what appeared. Its legal because you have powers not mentioned and in our judgment we feel every president possesses. The law doesnt apply to you. They decide that the National Security dictates. Why didnt you say that . You said it was illegal. Thats what the report said. Now, you recall at the time you were discussing and what the position was that the principals representing the agency are. You had a representative from the nsa and from the cia and from the fbi. Which of them during the course of making up the options to these and these that involved illegal acts. Are do you recall any of them saying we cant do this because its illegal . No. Can you recall a discussion concerning the illegality . No. Does it strike you as peculiar that public officers in the most high level and sensitive positions of government would discuss recommending to the president actions that are illegal and possibly unconstitutional without asking themselves whether that was a proper thing for them to be doing . I think it is except for the fact that i think for many of the people you were talking about something they have been aware of had been undertaken for a long period of time. Is that adequate justification some. Im not trying to justify. Im trying to tell you what my impression is of what happened at the time. For criminals could be excused on the ground that somebody had done it before, there wouldnt be much population in the prisons today. No. What other things are being dhan may recommended . There were several things that were important that we should have known about that we didnt that could have influenced our judgment. Is the Health Program that we didnt know about. Chaos or whatever it was that the cia had their own private operation going that we didnt know about. Can you tell us or is there a reason why the witness should not tell us what they were . No. There is no reason. The Justice Department made the disclosures and the rockefeller report set out the operation chaos. Briefly, what were they . The program was essentially designed to so discord and i dont know what the correct chemical term is, but it was an offensive program against the designated target by the fbi in terms give us an example. Professor jones is a member of the socialist Workers Party and he is running for the school board. They cent a letter to the newspaper saying you may not know this, but he is running for the school board. You did not know about it at the time of the filing. You later learned that. No one was to know about it including anyone in the Justice Department. Including the attorney general. Including the attorney general. The operation is that they had a group set up that was concerned directly or the events occurring within the continental United States. The cia had very little interest in or coverage of those we thought were important and they left the country. Thats where they thought it would be. Im told i have one minute left. Let me ask you this. Can you me who authorized this . Was it a president ial authorization . I dont think any president knew about it. Both of the programs were before. They went into the Johnson Administration and operation cha chaos. Im not trying to establish blame, but my own minds eye or whether someone authorized it. I dont know except they may have originated. Senator gold water . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I have a watch in front of me and i will confine myself to ten minutes. The interrogations have run 15. I want to speak about the Internal Revenue service and i am happy that the chairman mentioned this subject. Somebody likened this to the bull elephant. That was sliding along in the glass and probably the greatest threat to americans of anything we have and yet this morning is the first public indication i have heard that the Internal Revenue service will be investigated and i think its time. I notice a report or a letter written by you on september 21st in which you said nearly 18 months ago the president indicated a entire for irs to move against leftist organizations taking advantage of tax shelters. I have been pressing irs since that time to no avail. They closed down on any organization that they feel like protecting. Its high time that this committee or another thats the power to destroy. Have you been a member of the cia, fbi, cia . I was assigned as an Army Intelligence officer. Were you hired at one time . Did you go into the preparation of the houston plan . Was the houston plan ever used . No, sir. Never put into effect . No. What do you think about it as you sit here today . Senator, i think i still believe that there is a threat that may be characterized as a security threat. I think there people who want to destroy this country or people willing to go to Great Lengths to do it. I think the two attempts upon the life of the president are symptomatic of that. So i think theres a necessary place in our society for an effective Domestic Intelligence collection effort, and more importantly than collection for professional analysis of that information. I think that its perhaps easy to justify the emphasis that we attached in 1970, but i think its just as easy to discount it. We were sitting in the white house getting reports day in and day out of what was happening in this country. In terms of the violence, the number of bombings, the assassination attempts, the sniping incidents, 40,000 bombings for example in a period. Rotc facilities in the month of may in a twoweek period we were averaging two a day against rotc facilities. What happened then i think is from my perspective is that we convinced ourselves that this was something that was going to just continue to get worse until we reached the point where all the people who were predicting police state repression it was going to become a selffulfilling prophecy. As i suspected would be true in the black panther raid. My view was that we had to do something to stop it. Mr. White would say that this authorized the extension into every persons mailbox. Theoretically that may be true, although i dont think that the terms that we use in terms of highly selective targets or a top priority target was a bit looser that the term that attorney general clark used when he got authorization from president roosevelt and when president truman authorized electronic surveillance. But the fact of the matter is that we were motivated unjust blee to the lives of people subject to random acts of violence. I had confidence in the professional Intelligence Community. These were the professionals, the people who had been authorized to solve these problems. What i didnt realize then is that these kinds of programs, although theoretically and conceptually can be narrowly used in the best interest of the country by responsible people can lead to the type of the things that happened with the plumbers and with watergate. Everyone tries to link the houston plan as the precursor of the plumbers and the watergate. In my mind thats totally untrue. But its obvious to me that this kind of thing lends itself to the type of corruption that weve seen. Therefore, ive come to the conclusion that whereas i would traditionally have taken the position that im willing to run some small risk of infringing upon some small portion of the publics otherwise legitimate rights for the greater good of the security of all the people. I now have come to the conclusion that we have no practical alternative but to take a far greater risk that there are going to be these kinds of things that we cant deal effectively against until such time as perhaps our recourse is simply to the ongoing criminal process. But i dont want to leave the impression that i think that theres no problem because i think that we need to deal with this thing in such a way as to maximize the respect for the rights of the citizens, at the same time, not destroying the capabilitlility of the people. Thank you for that statement. I agree with that statement 100 . I have no other questions. Ill just comment that as long as we have daniel elsburgs, some newspapers, journalists, media people, organizations intent on changing the basic philosophy of this country by the same kind of subversion that you are now being at least charged with partway, i think we have to be forever on our toes and i think youve expressed your purpose well. Every time i pick up a morning paper or evening paper and i see the disclosure of secrets that i thought were locked up in my brain or my heart or my safe, i get worried about my country, and i hope that this committee through the continued diligence of its chairman and Staff Members will disclose everything wrong with this country. Thats all i have. Thank you, senator goldwater. Youve indicated that after the fact you found out that many of the agencies on that Interagency Task force were using tools that they were sitting there discussing white house approval for a painting. Why do you think they were going through the cha raid . I wish i knew. I dont know. I think part of the problem was that if the other agencies knew they were doing it, there would have been all sorts of problems because, for example, the fbi greatly resented president johnson ordering the military intelligence into the domestic collection area in 1967 because that was their charter. But the president directly ordered it and they had to live with it although they certainly were anxious and happy that the Committee Hearings blew that out of the water and got those people out of the business. I think for example the fbi and mr. Hoover would have had an absolute stroke if he had known the cia had an operation chaos going on. The last thing in the world the cia would have done was disclose to the bureau that they were working on their turf. Interagency jealousies and rivalries had part to do with it. The second thing is if youve got a Program Going and youre perfectly happy with its results, why take the risk it might be turned off if the president of the United States decides he doesnt want you to do it because they had no way of knowing in advance what decision the president might make. So why should the cia run the risk that the president may say hell no, i dont want you guys opening any mail. If they had admitted it they would have had to close the thing down. Apparently even the Justice Department didnt know about that. If they had told me it was obvious the word would have been out. Seems to me that many of these agencies just kind of operated in their own world and had their own programs going and they didnt want anyone else to know it and the thing that intrigues me is that i always have the illusion that the purpose of intelligence was to provide policy makers with information upon which to make policies. But if the policy maker doesnt know that those sources of information are available, i dont know what good it does anybody, except the people operating it for their own gratification. This brings me back to senator mondales question, how can a president feel that the law is being obeyed and the president ial policy is being adhered to . Doesnt that bring us then full circle back to the constitution and to the assurance to the extent that we can be sure of any human undertaking that the constitution is understood, the loyalty of the constitution is being given by every Public Servant . Yes, i think it comes back to an assumption by all officers of an agreement of all people in government as to exactly what the limits and responsibilities and obligations imposed by the constitution are. But i think that the problem weve had is not just in this area but in many areas and over the past 30 years youve had an increase of little steps, increased claim of executive power, and pretty soon after a 30year period all of a sudden you woke up one morning and here was this creature that had been created that no one along the line had ever really contemplated. Each of these steps i think were initially innocent and honest steps and i think most of these my belief that the people in the Intelligence Community were honest people, dedicated people, wanting to do an honest job and what they thought was best for the country. I dont think that they were out to destroy the liberties of the American People for any per verse political reason. When i got sucked in when i should have known better and when many other more tl intelligent people got sucked in is the concept that some inherent executive power that really extends beyond anything contemplated by those who made the incremental claims as we went through the years. And i think that position has been reached and now theres some hard looks at this and perhaps were even swinging in my judgment a little too much the other way. But i think thats healthy and i think that were on the right track. Kate scott, associate historian of the u. S. Senate, youve just been watching Tom Charles Huston at the end of his testimony there, the portion that were showing. Whats your reaction to that . Its just a terrific example of this ongoing debate that weve had in this country that animated the Constitutional Convention where the constitution was originally created. This need to carefully balance powers within the federal government, and huston is, i think, really getting to the kernel of the matter here which is congress is investigating these intelligence abuses in 1975 in part because it hadnt consistently provided oversight over the Intelligence Community for 30 years. Huston tom huston is suggesting that the executive branch with the acquiesce ens of congress had accumulated vast powers during the period we call the cold war and now congress is ready to reassert its authority. Hes saying, look, theres a tug of power here. The executive branch has a lot of power, now Congress Wants to exercise more oversight over these issues. What were really trying to understand is, what were really trying to get to is what are the constitutional principles involved, how do we protect constitutional liberties, Civil Liberties, Constitutional Rights and still ensure some kind of National Security. And i like how he summarizes that and the senator of maryland does such a nice job of prompting him there to say that really Congress Must be involved and they havent been. They need to provide oversight but they need to do it in a careful and cautious manner. If you compare the senate Church Committee investigation with the parallel investigation that was happening in the house at the same time, you see that the senate is much more careful about how it handles its materials, its sources, its classified materials. It has a whole Security System in place to manage classified materials. The house doesnt manage the investigation in the same careful way and brings a lot of criticism on the process of congressional oversight in the process. So i think that this just i love this particular exchange here with tom huston because hes really getting to the meat of the matter which is, yes, we have these constitutional principles. We need to protect them. We need to ensure that we are doing providing intelligence in a lawful manner, but we also need congresss help to do that. And hes also careful to say that congress shouldnt go too far in exercising good oversight. This hearing with tom huston took place on september 23, 1975 in this room where youre sitting. Could a hearing like this happen now or a Committee Like this exist now, or have hearings changed since then . Well, hearings have changed a great deal in part because the internet revolution and Digital Technologies allow Senate Hearings to be broadcast live. Most senate Committee Hearings today are broadcast live in the Committee Hearing rooms. And so its taken some of the specialness out of the process. In 1975 when the senate Church Committee was televised nationally, broadcast live and then segments were rerun for the evening news, that was still a relatively new and novel process. This was an era before cable television. We had the big three, abc, nbc and cbs, and if it didnt come on the evening news, most americans didnt watch it. Thats not true today when we have cspan which broadcasts senate and house proceedings live and we have the live broadcast of most senate Committee Hearings. I think today if you tried to organize a Committee Hearing like this one, a Committee Investigation like this one, you may not be the members sitting here might not be speaking to a packed audience because the journalists would be able to watch from the comfort of their own desks sitting in front of their laptops the live broadcast. And in that case it takes some of the specialness out of the process. Its harder to get a large audience for Committee Hearings these days. Youre interested and enthusiastic about the Church Committee hearings, but why should a general audience or Americans Care what happened in this room 40 years ago . I think its important because it reminds us that the issues that we face today, the challenges we face in balancing a need to protect Civil Liberties with a need to protect the nations security is an ongoing debate. Its certainly not one that were just engaging in. Its been ongoing for some time. I think the crises of the 1970s era and the senates response to that crises with new statutory reforms and Agency Internal reforms suggest that there are ways to address immediate problems in a way that makes people feel more comfortable and confident in the process and in the system going forward. I think history is best when it reminds us that the Current Issues that were grappling with today are in some ways not new. We need to look back on these periods in our past and say, okay, weve faced these problems before. These have been weve seen these as crises in the past. How are we going to respond to them in a way today that is mindful of the progress t