We have seen today the dark side of those activities, where many Americans who were not even suspected of crime were not only spied upon, but they were harassed, they were discredited, and at times endangered. — Senator Frank Church
The Church Committee, I think, is probably the most important congressional investigation in modern American history. It was a watershed moment in the history of the CIA and the FBI and the NSA. — James Risen on Democracy Now!
The U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities — more commonly known as the Church Committee — was formed on January 27, 1975. Idaho Senator Frank Church led the 16-month investigation into the covert operations of the U.S. intelligence community, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, and their attacks on subversives and “enemies of the state.”
Members of the Church Committee meet in Washington, D.C., February 6, 1975. Photo by Henry Griffin / AP. Source: The National Security Archive
The Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy notes that the Church Committee was created “in response to explosive revelations of the U.S. Army’s program of domestic surveillance and an article published in the New York Times on December 22, 1974, by Seymour Hersh exposing assassination attempts on foreign officials by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).”
The Levin Center continues:
In the end, all 14 reports issued by the committee were supported on a bipartisan basis, and the inquiry won praise for its sustained bipartisanship.
The 16-month investigation, which included 126 committee meetings, 40 subcommittee hearings, 150 staff members, and 800 witness interviews, uncovered shocking facts and intelligence operations that had been unknown to both Congress and the public: [Read the long list of abuses.]
As a result of the Church Committee hearings, in 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which, Katelyn Epsley-Jones and Christina Frenzel write, “created the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to issue warrants for domestic eavesdropping.”
Additional Resources
Full Church Committee hearings.
The Senator Who Took On the CIA by Adam Hochschild (The Nation)
The Last Honest Man: Frank Church and the Fight to Restrain U.S. Power by Lloyd Green (The Guardian)
The Church Committee Hearings & the FISA Court by Katelyn Epsley-Jones and Christina Frenzel (PBS)
The Church Committee Report: Revelations from the Bombshell 1970s Investigation into the National Security State by Matthew Guariglia and Brian Hochman (W. W. Norton & Company)
The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys — And One Senator’s Fight to Save Democracy by James Risen, with Thomas Risen (Back Bay Books)
Watch the Democracy Now! interview, “The Last Honest Man”: James Risen on How Frank Church Exposed CIA, FBI & NSA Assassinations, Abuse, below.
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