Cspan 2024 coverage can be watched live on cspan as votes are cast. Along with candidate speeches and results beginning with the iowa caucuses. And then attention primary on january 23. Campaign 2024 on cspan. Your unfiltered view of politics as. Good evening and welcome to the National Press club. The place where news happens. I am the 2023 president of the press club and managing editor. Thank you for joining us here at the National Press club and on cspan. I want to take a quick moment to say thank you to our staff and volunteers here at the National Press club for helping to put this event together, including headliners like lori russo and Cecily Scott Martin who is a program coordinator. We have a very Exciting Program tonight with our esteemed Panel Focused on a book just out called the last honest man. Lets get started. Quotes if addict tater ever took charge in this country the technological capacity that has been given that government could allow it to impose total tyranny and there would be done way to fight back. That may sound like a statement from today but it dates back to 1975 from senator frank church, a democrat from idaho. Church served in the u. S. Senate from 1957 through 1980 and in to investigate abuses by the cia, the National Security agency, the fbi, and the irs. Tonight we are looking forward to an exciting conversation with james the risen, author of the last honest man and gary hart, who served on the Church Committee. We also have Staff Members peter fenn , Frederick Baron , carl inderfurth. These Congressional Staffers a recently found himself at the center of news when they wrote an open letter to jim jordan, a republican from ohio. Jordan chairs a newly formed House Select Committee on the weaponization of the federal government and these former staffers urged jordan to change course and pursue a bipartisan inquiry that i felt had made the Church Committee successful and effective. Senator hart is the last surviving member of the committee and wrote an oped calling the jordan subcommittee and mockery. We are privileged to have both james risen and senator hart here to discuss some of the lessons from the Church Committee and how it is relevant today. Was a reporter for the New York Times where he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for stories about the National SecurityAgency Domestic spy program. He was also part of a team that won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for coverage of the september 11 attack. Senator hart represented colorado until 1987. A graduate of yale law school, he returned to private practice after leaving the senate. He earned a doctor of philosophy degree from oxford in 2001. He has stayed active in government as chair of the u. S. State department interNational SecurityAdvisory Council. Chair of the u. S. Defense Advisory Council and chair of the American Security project. Welcome to the National Press club. I figured i would start with senator hart and james risen for questions and then broaden the topic out to others. Please feel free to pop in if you have other comments or questions. I will try to ask as many questions for the audience as possible so write them down on a card and hand them up to me. Jim, you spent decades doing investigative reporting on National Security issues and have written several other books on the kgb, the cia, abortion, and other topics. What prompted you to read about frank Church Specifically and why now . Thank you, again, for having us. The reason i wrote and tom wrote this book was, the idea originally came to me because i covered the cia for the New York Times for many years, especially after 9 11. After 9 11, if you remember, the Bush Administration started complaining very loudly and publicly that the 9 11 attacks had been made possible by the frank church and the Church Committee which had existed 20 years before uh dick cheney, in particular, as Vice President constantly complained that the problems in the Intelligence Community that had led to the intelligence failure of 9 11had been caused by frank church who by that time had been uh out of the senate for 20 years and dead for more than 15. Um and so it was a weird, a weird excuse. I began to think at the time that i shall learn more about the Church Committee. As time went on, and as a republican in the Bush Administration continue to make that refrain of saying that 9 11 was caused by frank church, i realized i should learn more about it. And then over the following years when the iraq war went so badly and bush and cheney lost popularity. A lot of americans began to listen to what cheney had been saying about the Church Committee and realized that now that they had turned against cheney, maybe they should have another Church Committee that and so the idea of a new Church Committee became something that people started talking about to investigate the bush and cheney administrations abuses of intelligence. And so that led me to begin to think about eventually writing a book about what was the truth about the Church Committee. And then as i was writing about it and about to publish the book, the the new Republican Party in the house started talking about the need for a, for a new Church Committee. So its something that i realize that has become part of the american political lexicon. The Church Committee is now a synonym for a truth and reconciliation committee. And every time there is and a big scandal or a call for investigations, everyone in washington now says we need a new Church Committee. And so i thought we needed a new history of what really happened with the Church Committee. Thats awesome. Did you find any surprises when you were digging into this . Oh, yeah, lots of surprises. I mean, it, it was the thing that amazed me the most is how much these guys investigated in a one year, a span of just one year. You gotta remember going back into that time period and its, its hard to, what was so fascinating to me was getting back into the mindset of the 19 seventies to realize there had never been any congressional oversight of the Intelligence Community prior to the Church Committee, the cia had gone for 30 years with no supervision whatsoever and there were no rules in place, no laws, no rules that really governed the cia or the fbi for that matter, or the nsa. There was no public debate or public discussion of what the Intelligence Community should do. And so everything that the Church Committee did was brand new. And that is, if you step back and you think you create a committee and then you tell them, you have to investigate 30 years of history of an agency. Its pretty awesome and i think they did a really Pretty Amazing job in one year. I agree the detail, the book really details all the work that they put into it. Its Pretty Amazing um, in your book. As you just mentioned, the cia was around three decades old when they, the committee was formed. How do you think it was able to amass so much power and operate without oversight for so long . Well, thats a great question. It was something that, maybe senator hart could talk about also. But i think there was a sense in the post war world post war era, that americans didnt want to ask too many questions, especially after World War Two. And then the mccarthy era hit in the early fifties and there was a, a witch hunt for, communists and for anyone who was a dissident. And it was, i think in the fifties there was a, a sense that, americans were taught to trust the government. And i think that all began to break down with vietnam and uh the Civil Rights Movement and then watergate and i think watergate really opened the floodgates to questioning of the Intelligence Community. And so that really, i think in a lot of ways, the Church Committee was a what it was seen at the time as kind of a sequel to what to the watergate investigation, even though it, it ended up in a very different place. But it was, it was a kind of a, there was the beginning of a progressive and Reform Movement in the 19 seventies. What do you think made senator church begin to question the inner workings of the American Government because he really did go through transformation, didnt he . Yeah, it was fascinating to learn about his background. Frank church was from idaho. He grew up in boise and in the 19 twenties and thirties, he was you know, and then when he, he got to the senate when he was only 32 in 1956 he was really a very traditional liberal cold warrior. A lot like john kennedy who he really looked up to, they were both in the senate at the same time and he was a typical 19 fifties democrat who, uh, believed in the, the cold war fight against communism. But vietnam really radicalized him and he became one of the first opponents of the, of the war in the senate. And it was largely because of his service in china in World War Two where he had seen how corrupt the regime of shang kai shek was that he saw in South Vietnam something very similar and he realized very quickly how corrupt the South Vietnamese government was. And that radical, he eventually became radicalized by the us involvement in the war. And he, he began to see that the United States was on the path of becoming a militaristic empire. And he thought that the Intelligence Community was part of that. Senator hart. You knew senator church personally . Oh, sorry. Uh senator hart, you knew senator church personally. What was he like . And what is your fondest memory of senator church . Well, um yeah, we became very good friends out of that experience and a lot of democratic caucuses over the years. And when i became a National Candidate in the eighties, he and went out of their way to um, encourage me and support me in their own way. And he was ailing at that time. But, if i may, id like to answer a question. You havent asked. The first of many phone conversations that james risen. And i had, he called and said, im gonna write a book about the Church Committee. Are you willing to talk to me . And i said, of course, its long overdue. Its almost 50 years now. And i said, why are you writing the book . He stunned me by saying, i think the Church Committee was the most important Congressional Committee in the history of the republic. Let me repeat that. The author said, i think the Church Committee was the most important Congressional Committee in the history of this nation. And i simply said, based on, and he said, because the Church Committee built the bridge from 30 years of cold war and involvement of the Intelligence Community in the cold war to the post cold war world and forced certainly this cia the fbi, nsa, and others to begin to deal with a world beyond the so called, well, not so called, but the communist threat that had been the central driving principle of almost all National Security in this country for three decades. So thats why this book is important among other things. And as a caution, im giving answers that you have on that as a caution to anybody here whos going to review this book. I mean, point out one thing that i think other reviewers, early reviewers have missed. And that is i know at least one review where they said frank church created the committee and then made himself chairman of it or Something Like that. That is not what happened. You want to know how this happened. Turn the pages 162 to 167 in the risen book and you will find the author and the hero is my hero, mike mansfield. He had been trying for almost 25 years to bring oversight and accountability to this burgeoning intelligence network. And so, so the wrap around of the committee about my friend, senator church, friend of many of us here was that we were all the product beginning in early 75 of senator mansfields efforts for almost a quarter of a century. Is that correct . So, its called the Church Committee because frank was chairman. There you are. But he didnt create the committee, right . We got a brief biography about mansfield in the book too. Hes a really amazing guy. Yes, you do. Thats true. Did you have any more thoughts about mansfield . Oh, man, read the book. Is this, they have an entire books written about mansfield. Hes an amazing guy. So, senator church grew into a left leaning progressive by the standards of that day. How does someone so far to the left create a functioning bipartisan committee. You want me to answer that . Yeah, i think as senator hart just said, he, he didnt create it on his own. Mansfield was a key, was the Key Driving Force behind the, the committee. And in fact, as i talk about in the book, he uh mansfield at first mansfield who was the Senate Majority leader in 1975. And just to get step back one step, you gotta remember that in the midterm elections of 1974 the democrats had a landslide victory. Uh and so in 1975 the democrats had 60 seats in the senate and i think almost 294 295 in the house, it was an overwhelming majorities. And so mansfield had the ability to pretty much uh create this committee as whatever he wanted it, but he decided to make it as bipartisan as possible and only gave the democrats a one seat majority on the committee. He picked a wide range of senators from both parties. He wanted a, a balance um because he, he thought this was so important that he didnt want it to be viewed as highly partisan. He originally wanted senator phil hart of michigan to be the chairman. Who and hart had was known as the conscience of the senate. He was a liberal, but he was Close Friends with a lot of, uh, conservatives in the senate. But hart had just found out that he had cancer and he, he told, privately told, uh, mansfield that he couldnt do it because he had cancer. And so, but he recommended church because he knew church wanted it and he thought church would be good at it. Mansfield, church lobbied mansfield to some degree. And, they, i can go, you want me to explain a little bit more about that because it was interesting because at the same time, the church wanted this job. He was also thinking about running for president. And he had to kind of promise to mansfield that he wouldnt run for president while he was running the committee and mansfield and many others thought that meant that church would not run for president in 1976. But church interpreted what he had promised to mean that he would only not run until the committees work was done, which he thought might mean he could still run in 76 as soon as the committee finished its work. And that led that misinterpretation by both sides of what each other thought that had been promised, led to a lot of problems for church over the throughout the Church Committee and to the press criticism of him. But i think one of the, as i said, they, they tried, mansfield tried to balance out all of the member, the membership of the committee. And i think senator hart told me a story about how you got picked right after you were just been elected to the senate for the very first time. So in the 1st 30 days, did you talk a little bit . Remember about, you told me about how mansfield uh came to you. Well, i hope a lot of people here knew my mansfield. He was my hero and mentor and he was to an awful lot of other younger members of congress and senators. He was also known as being sparse with words. So he walked up to me on the floor of the senate. I said mr leader, he said, gary just formed this committee with frank church is gonna be chairman. I want you on it. Investigate, do a good job. He turned around and wa