THE CHURCH COMMITTEE REPORT

The blockbuster report that exposed decades of official misconduct.

In 1974, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the CIA, operating at the request of President Richard Nixon, had violated its own charter by amassing intelligence files on more than 10,000 American protestors, dissidents, and activists. Hersh’s New York Times article also hinted that break-ins, wiretaps, and other forms of unwarranted surveillance were routine. The next month, the U.S. Senate formed the so-called Church Committee to investigate improper or unethical intelligence activities. The committee’s charge extended to the FBI, whose methods were partially exposed four years earlier when activists sent purloined FBI documents to the Washington Post. The Church Committee’s six-volume report, which appeared in 1976, detailed a long list of scandalous practices undertaken by national security agencies that Congress had effectively left to their own devices. In this abridged version of that report, edited by historian Guariglia and scholar Hochman, readers will encounter a wide range of infamous programs—including MKULTRA, CHAOS, and COINTELPRO—whose original intent may have been valid but which soon extended far beyond any legitimate intelligence or law enforcement purpose. Indeed, the editors note that modern readers are likely to recoil from the “vindictiveness, recklessness, and unrepentant racism” of those who directed these programs. Among the parade of examples are the FBI’s vile campaign against Martin Luther King Jr., outlandish plans to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and the surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting subjects in efforts to develop chemical and biological weapons. But the list of misdeeds was much longer, and the damage more consequential, than even these high-profile episodes suggest. The Church Committee’s sober report is a forceful reminder of that period’s excesses—not in the social and political movements that the government targeted, but rather among the public servants whose perverseness undermined our constitutional democracy.

A timely reminder about the perils of unchecked power.