The Church Committee (formally the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a US 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 US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The most shocking revelations of the committee include Operation MKULTRA, which involved the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control;[1][2] COINTELPRO, which involved the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations;[3] Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders;[4][5][6][7] and Operation Mockingbird as a systematic propaganda campaign with domestic and foreign journalists operating as CIA assets and dozens of US news organizations providing cover for CIA activity,[8] confirming earlier stories that charged that the CIA had cultivated relationships with private institutions, including the press.[9] Without identifying individuals by name, the Church Committee stated that it found fifty journalists who had official, but secret, relationships with the CIA.[9]
It also unearthed Project SHAMROCK, a program in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA, and officially confirmed the existence of this signals intelligence agency to the public for the first time.
- ^ "The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Foreign and Military Intelligence". Church Committee report, no. 94-755, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. Washington, D.C.: United States Congress. 1976. p. 392. Archived from the original on June 26, 2003.
- ^ "Project MKULTRA, The CIA'sProgram Of Research InBehavioral Modification" (PDF). August 3, 1977. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 2, 2019.
- ^ "Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans – Church Committee final report. II" (PDF). US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. United States Senate. April 26, 1976. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 16, 2015.
- ^ "The CIA's Family Jewels". National Security Archive, George Washington University. May 16, 1973. Archived from the original on August 20, 2017. Retrieved May 4, 2021.
- ^ "A glimpse into the CIA's 'family jewels'". The New York Times. June 26, 2007. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 4, 2021.
- ^ "Church Committee Reports, Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Book I". Assassination Archives and Public Research Center. April 26, 1976. Archived from the original on April 22, 2008.
- ^ "U.S. Senate: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities". www.senate.gov. Retrieved May 4, 2021.
- ^ Church Committee Commission, Volume VII, Covert Action. U.S. Government Printing Office. December 4–5, 1975.
- ^ a b Hadley, David P. (2019). "Introduction". The Rising Clamor: The American Press, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Cold War. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. pp. 3–4, 10. ISBN 9780813177380. Retrieved June 8, 2020.