Report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities

[keeeto]

Source:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_I.pdf
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_II.pdf
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_III.pdf
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_IV.pdf
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_VI.pdf

It was published in 1976, but is a work of the U.S. Government so I believe it is in the public domain.

From Wikipedia:
The Church Committee was the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church (D-ID) in 1975. The committee investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses during the mid-1970s, including the Watergate Hearings, the Rockefeller Commission, and the Pike Committee. One result of the committee's efforts was the establishment of the permanent U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee)

[TriciaG]

I'll add this to the government reports list we've got going here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=52126

[TriciaG]

This is honkin' HUGE! Book 1 is 640 pages. If Books 2-6 are just as large, this is a more gargantuan project than the Watergate Report.

[ColleenMc]

I was just listening to Chris Hayes this morning and he was talking about how the "Gang of 8" who are the members of both committees of Congress that are able to see the most highly classified stuff so that Congress can do adequate intelligence oversight, is a product of the Church Committee along with a lot of other stuff we kind of take for granted now.

I was a history major and an all-but-phd doctoral dropout who specialized in US and political/diplomatic history, and I had only the vaguest idea of what the Church Committee was and did. I knew that it was post-Watergate and recommended a series of reforms that were implemented to put more control and oversight on the CIA and other intelligence agencies. That was it.

The Church Committee actually makes sense as a follow on to the Watergate report because it was a direct response to the Watergate investigation revelations of how the CIA and other agencies used the "national security" blanket to keep secret unsavory or illegal activities including domestic espionage during the 1960s and the Watergate era, as well as the Nixon administration's attempts to put non-intelligence activity under the cover of "classified", or to get the CIA to say things were a matter of national security, as part of the coverup attempts.

Hayes was suggesting that things going on now, such as the move this week to have only a handful of Republican congressmen rather than the full Gang of 8 briefed on classified intelligence stuff that the president has been demanding, is a deliberate undermining of the oversight structure the Church committee created.

Like the Watergate report, I think it is extremely relevant to the present moment and may be getting a lot more attention in the near future as current events go on.

Even if it IS massive. Is there a section we can do that is the most critical part? Like an executive summary sort of thing?