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Spies, Civil Liberties, and the Senate: the 1975 Church Committee

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Spies, Civil Liberties, and the Senate: the 1975 Church Committee Spies, Civil Liberties, and the Senate: The 1975 Church Committee Doctorate of Philosophy Department of History Dafydd Townley May 2018 Abstract This research examines the relationship between US public opinion and national security policy. The focus of this study is the role that public opinion played during the Year of Intelligence, the sixteen-month investigation by Congress into alleged domestic abuses by the US intelligence community. The period, between January 1975 and April 1976, saw the innermost secrets of various US intelligence agencies laid bare before the world as a result of televised public hearings and investigative journalism. The research analyses what both President Gerald R. Ford and Congress defined as public opinion, and how they used such information to shape their strategic decisions concerning national security. The study investigates the ways in which Congress responded to public opinion during the creation of the Church Committee, and how great an influence public opinion had on the objectives and methods of the Church Committee investigation. The research also assesses whether the Church Committee fulfilled its obligations the Senate and the American public and considers the criticism that some contemporaries and academics have levelled at the committee’s chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. Using extensive archival evidence supported by oral history interviews, the research identifies that public opinion played an important role during the Year of Intelligence and, as a consequence, national security policy. The significance of the role is clearly illustrated by the research’s contrast of the failure of the Ford administration to achieve any of its strategic objectives, and the success of Congress in gaining substantial reform to congressional oversight of the intelligence community. However, the results of this study illustrate that public opinion does not dominate national security policy; it is more accurate to say that national security policy and public opinion interact in a reciprocal relationship. Declaration of Ownership I confirm that this is my own work and the use of all material from other sources has been properly and fully acknowledged. Dafydd Townley 2 Contents Acknowledgements 5 Tables 6 Abbreviations and Acronyms 7 Introduction The National Security Debate 8 The Church Committee’s Contribution to Academia 12 The Historiography 16 Research Summary 29 Key Primary Sources and Methodology 31 Defining Public Opinion 35 Chapter 1: The Ford Administration and Public Opinion in the Year of Intelligence 1.1 The Hersh Article 43 1.2 National Dissatisfaction 46 1.3 Creating the Rockefeller Commission 48 1.4 The Rockefeller Commission at Work 53 1.5 Public Reaction to the Rockefeller Commission 57 1.6 Thwarting Congress 60 1.7 The Failure of the House Investigation 63 1.8 The Intelligence Coordinating Group 70 1.9 Ford and Public Opinion 73 1.10 Ford’s Failure 78 Chapter 2: The Formation of the Church Committee 2.1 The Public and the Church Committee 83 2.2 The Failure of Congressional Intelligence Oversight 87 2.3 Ensuring a Balanced Enquiry 94 2.4 Selecting the Committee 99 2.5 The Chairman’s Challenge 105 2.6 Expectations of the Committee 109 2.7 The People’s Committee 113 Chapter 3: The Church Committee at Work 3.1 Public Opinion and the Church Committee Enquiry 117 3.2 The Assassinations Investigation 120 3.3 The Foreign Intelligence Hearings 124 3.4 The Interim Report 127 3 3.5 The No Such Agency 134 3.6 Keeping the Press Interested 138 3.7 The Domestic Revelations 144 3.8 The Effect of the Public Hearings 150 Chapter 4: Criticism of the Church Committee 4.1 Aspersions Cast at the Church Committee 153 4.2 The Efficiency and Safety of US Intelligence Community 155 4.3 Church and the Public 163 4.4 A Witch Hunt? A Whitewash? 168 4.5 Judging the Church Committee’s Political Neutrality 174 4.6 Church and the Presidency 178 4.7 Defying the Critics 187 Chapter 5: The Legacy of the Church Committee 5.1 A Long-Lasting Effect 190 5.2 The Findings of the Church Committee Final Report 192 5.3 The Church Committee Recommendations 198 5.4 The Public Response to the Church Committee 202 5.5 The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 207 5.6 Legislative Legacy 215 5.7 A Significant Contribution to Oversight Reform 225 Conclusion Life After the Committee 228 Public Opinion’s Effect on the Intelligence Community 230 Public Opinion and National Security Policy 237 Bibliography 241 4 Acknowledgements This research could not have been completed without the support and guidance of numerous individuals. Principal among these has been my supervisor, Dr. Mara Oliva. From the start of my research, Mara always had a five-year plan for both my project and personal development which has allowed me to focus on ‘the next six months.’ Her enthusiasm for my research has been infectious and uplifting in times of worry, and her guidance has always been given with my long-term future in mind. Mara and my secondary supervisor, Prof. Patrick Major, have offered invaluable guidance throughout the last three years and shared their experiences with me so that I too could learn from them. In addition, my colleagues in the Department of History have offered nothing but encouragement. My moments of self-doubt have been dispersed by numerous corridor-chats and informal discussions over coffee in various buildings of the Whiteknights campus. Chief among those dispensing counsel have been Prof. Emily West, Dr. Richard Blakemore, Dr. Ruth Salter, and fellow PhD researchers Darius Wainwright and Charlie Crouch. Thanks must also go to Prof. Iwan Morgan of UCL’s Institute of the Americas, and Dr. Malcolm Craig of Liverpool John Moores University for their welcome frank advice. In addition to the counsel of those mentioned above, the financial support of several bodies needs to be recognised without which I would not have been able to conduct my archival research. Firstly, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation whose research travel grant allowed me to visit the presidential library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Secondly, the American Politics Group for kindly awarding me the Ros Davies Memorial Travel Grant. This financial assistance, along with that of the Royal Historical Society, enabled me to undertake archival work at both the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., and the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, Georgia. Special mention must go George Lardner Jr. for allowing me access to his papers at the Library of Congress. Warm thanks must also go to Garry Wenske, Director of the Frank Church Institute for organising my time in Boise; former member of the US House of Representatives Larry LaRocco for inviting me to Idaho; and Cheryl Oestreicher, head of Special Collections & Archives at the Albertsons Library at Boise State University, for her advice surrounding the Frank Church Collection housed at the library. Both Garry and Larry were instrumental in putting me in contact with former members of the Church Committee, and Senator Church’s senatorial staff. Finally, and most importantly, thanks must also go to my fiancé, Mandy, and our children, Dylan and Grace. They have not only had to put with my prolonged absences whilst I have visited archives and conferences at home and abroad but have also had to deal with the constant intense attention that this research has required. Theirs has been, by far, the heaviest burden. Without their unending patience, constant support, love and enthusiasm, I would have not been able to finish this project. 5 Tables and Illustrations Tables Table 1. Intelligence Agency Gallup Poll Results 1965 -1975. 162 Illustrations Figure 1. William Colby testifies to the Rockefeller Commission. 51 Figure 2. Gerald R. Ford and Henry Kissinger greet Sen. Frank Church and Sen. 61 John Tower at the White House. Figure 3. Committee Chairman Senator Frank Church (D-ID). 102 Figure 4. Frank Church reading the committee's Interim Report. 130 Figure 5. The Church Committee's public hearings. 146 Figure 6. Church campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. 185 6 Abbreviations and Acronyms ACLU American Civil Liberties Union CIA Central Intelligence Agency COINTEPRO Counter Intelligence Programme DIA Defence Intelligence Agency FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ICG Intelligence Coordinating Group IRS Internal Revenue Service NSA National Security Agency PFIAB President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board SCC Special Coordinating Committee SSCI Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 7 Introduction The National Security Debate The public debate of the supremacy of national security over civil liberties of the private citizen has been an enduring one. In the United States, such a debate has an increased significance because of the central role the Bill of Rights plays in the nation’s Constitution. The Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, was created specifically to limit government interference in the life of American citizens. It established in law the personal rights that had been withheld from the US citizens when it was ruled as a British colony until 1776. Despite the defining role of the Bill of Rights in American political and private life, the national security debate has caused a schism in the US political arena that has at times withstood the partisan divide. On the one hand are those who regard the primacy of the civil liberties of the citizen as unquestionable. During the height of the Cold War some liberal politicians, such as Eugene McCarthy, believed that the right to privacy was ‘threatened by such proposals as those to permit the extension of wire-tapping.’1 More recently the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has stated that ‘heightened national security concerns are still being used to justify all kinds of violations of our rights.’2 Conversely there are those who believe that the security of the national state should take precedence.
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