Posted on 10/29/2019 11:48:19 PM PDT by tired&retired
The Church Committee was a U.S. Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church (D-ID), the committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the "Year of Intelligence", including its House counterpart, the Pike Committee, and the presidential Rockefeller Commission.
The committee's efforts led to the establishment of the permanent U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
By the early years of the 1970s, a series of troubling revelations had appeared in the press concerning intelligence activities.
First came the revelations by Army intelligence officer Christopher Pyle in January 1970 of the U.S. Army's spying on the civilian population and Senator Sam Ervin's Senate investigations produced more revelations.
Then on December 22, 1974, The New York Times published a lengthy article by Seymour Hersh detailing operations engaged in by the CIA over the years that had been dubbed the "family jewels". Covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments were reported for the first time.
In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US citizens.
Among the most shocking revelations of the committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK, in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s.
The Church report found that the CIA was careful about keeping the United States Postal Service from learning that government agents were opening mail.
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (...) Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. (...)
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
History repeats itself.
The Romney - Collins - Murkowski types will get on this committee and vote against the president. No way.
Frank Church did more damage to this nation’s intelligence services than any single person in history.
“One of the most sensational revelations of the Church Committee was Operation SHAMROCK by which the major telecommunications companies RCA, Western Union, and International Telephone and Telegraph reluctantly shared their telegram traffic with the NSA and its predecessors from 1945 to the early 1970s.
Near the program’s end, NSA analysts were reviewing 150,000 telegrams a month. Information from the telegrams provided grist for the Watch List, which, in the words of Frank Church, “resulted in the invasion of privacy of American citizens whose private and personal telegrams were intercepted.”
Deep state has reinstituted the domestic spying and weaponized it as a political machine.
I'm of the opinion that liberty or death means exactly that. We'd be better off dead than give the "intelligence community" any suggestion, yet alone ultimate power over our God given rights.
The time is close approaching when there is no right to privacy in this country, unless you want to have an abortion.
We don’t need another disasterous Church Committee we need an Un-American Activities Committee and a whole lot of pikes on which to display the communist heads.
T&R,
You’ve posted an interesting piece. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can find enough honest and objective legislators on either side of the aisle to produce a honest and unbiased investigation. And I’m not sure we got that good of a result from the Church Committee investigation.
I’ll have to go back and refresh my memory of that committee and think about your post.
G-F
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