The Church Committee
A 1975 Senate investigation revealed the CIA had actually plotted to assassinate foreign leaders and the FBI had run a secret program trying to psychologically destroy Martin Luther King Jr. — and the resulting report is still the single most detailed public accounting of American intelligence abuse ever produced.
The Church Committee was a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation, chaired by Senator Frank Church, into decades of abuses by American intelligence agencies including the CIA, FBI, and NSA. The committee's extensive investigation and public hearings formally confirmed numerous previously secret programs, including CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders and the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign against domestic political figures, leading directly to the creation of permanent congressional intelligence oversight.
- →The Church Committee, formally the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, was established on January 27, 1975, chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church, following revelations connected to the Watergate scandal and investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's reporting on CIA assassination attempts.
- →The committee's investigation formally confirmed the CIA had plotted the assassination of several foreign leaders, and separately documented extensive FBI surveillance and harassment of American political activists, including detailed evidence of a specific campaign to psychologically undermine Martin Luther King Jr.
- →The committee held extensive public hearings throughout 1975, presenting testimony and evidence to the American public about intelligence community conduct in unusually direct and public detail for the era.
- →The committee's findings directly led to significant institutional reform, including the establishment of the permanent Senate and House Intelligence Committees for ongoing congressional oversight, and a presidential executive order formally banning political assassination as a tool of U.S. policy.