The 1975 Church Committee, established to investigate the intelligence community, succeeded because the members of the committee and the staff that supported it put the national interest above party interest, author and journalist James Risen and former Sen. Gary Hart, the last surviving member of the Church Committee, told a National Press Club audience Monday.
Risen, author of “The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy,” and his son and co-author, Tom Risen, were also joined by members of the Church Committee's staff Peter Fenn, Frederick Baron, Rick Inderfurth and Loch Johnson.
The panel emphasized the Church Committee's bipartisanship. Hart noted that although Democrats had won big in the 1974 midterms and had 60 Senators, then Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield set up the Church Committee with six Democrats and five Republicans, giving his own party a one-vote majority. He asked Sen. Philip Hart to chair the committee, but he declined because he had just been diagnosed with cancer.
James Risen explained that the Church Committee was triggered by a report Seymour Hersh wrote for The New York Times about domestic spying conducted by the CIA. The intelligence community, he said, was the only part of the government that lacked oversight. Risen said he considers the Church Committee to be the most important committee in the history of the nation.
The committee's leaders, Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, the chairman, and Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, the ranking member, agreed they would take an aggressive approach, Risen said. Several panel members said the committee followed the evidence wherever it led.
Asked what their takeaways from the Church Committee that would be applicable today would be the panel replied:
Inderfurth: Oversight is more important today than ever with new technology, such as artificial intelligence and drones.
Baron: To be effective, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, must be bipartisan.
Johnson: We need to have the right people in the right places. Elect good people to high office.
Fenn: As Sen. Church said, “If you adopt the techniques of your opponent, you will become like them." We see attacks on democracy all over the world. We need to be a country others look up to.
Hart: Bipartisanship is more important than ever.
James Risen: When things work right, things get accomplished.
National Press Club President Eileen O'Reilly moderated the event.
