Going All In to Expose Intelligence Malfeasance (The Pike Committee Report)

[Douglas Caddy]

Going All In to Expose Intelligence Malfeasance (The Pike Committee Report)

https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/01/02/going-all-in-to-expose-intelligence-malfeasance/?fbclid=IwAR0ErCCdLEr6YPtN2bdAYN3NQrHeVzYeyn0BnZ967QPcwsJmvA5ZFFDTMVE

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks for posting this Doug.

Those were the days were they not?  What disclosures, what publicity, what headlines.  Both in the House with Pike and the senate with Frank Church.

For the first time, the CIA and FBI were on the ropes.  It actually looked like the good guys, like Frank Church and Otis Pike, would win.

But as usual, power wins out.

George H. W. Bush, the director who said he was never in the CIA,  led a furious counter attack he coordinated with Jerry Ford, Henry Kissinger and David Phillips.  Then came the death of Richard Welch and they pulled out all the stops.  You would have thought a president had died.  

After that, Pike could not even get his report published through the printing office and Dan Schorr had to smuggle it out so the Village Voice could publish it.  Which is what you have here.  Then Bush made CBS fire Schorr.  The Pike report had to be published in England.  I have a second hand copy I am proud to say.

It was called the season of inquiry and it did America some real good.  It never returned.

Edited January 6, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Jim Hargrove]

Oh, man, lengthy excerpts of the Pike Committee Report from the famous Village Voice supplement of 2/16/1976!!  I tried in vain to get the densely printed 24-page supplement more than 40 years ago, and now here it is, just a click away.  Megathanks to Mr. Caddy for the link and to Jim DiEugenio for the backgrounder.

If memory serves, both the Pike Committee and Church Committee reports were getting mainstream press mentions at roughly the same time.  To my recollection, at least, the truth about American Security State operations was never more nearly exposed.

Jim—If you were to compare the English version of the Pike Report with what is in the 1976 Village Voice supplement, would you hazard an estimate of the thoroughness of the VV story?  Was the Pike Report ever finished?  My understanding is that even the English version was a draft.

Thanks again!!!  My reading for the next several days has clearly arrived.  Technology does have it upsides!

[Douglas Caddy]

Confidential Informant Robert Merritt, who had three meetings with President Nixon in 1972, including one about Nixon's Message about the Alien Presence, is mentioned on page 91 (see first column on the left) of the Pike Committee Report. Merritt was the sole employee of Nixon's Huston Plan, a copy of which has never been made public. 

https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/01/02/going-all-in-to-expose-intelligence-malfeasance/?fbclid=IwAR0ErCCdLEr6YPtN2bdAYN3NQrHeVzYeyn0BnZ967QPcwsJmvA5ZFFDTMVE

 

[James DiEugenio]

The Pike Report, as published in England is over 250 pages long.  So what the Village Voice printed was either excerpted or was in summary form.

And you are right Jim, the Pike Report was not completed.  What we have today is something like a rough draft of what it would have been.

But let me say why I think that is.  The Pike Report is not at all written in the gentlemanly language of the Church Committee Report.  

It is harsh and, in some places, quite bitter about the whole experience.  It does not give one iota about manners or etiquette.  The report says, for instance, that the State Department deliberately muzzled witnesses before the committee  in defiance of the law. (p. 45)  It would then describe how, at a certain key point in an inquiry, the White House would cut off further classified information from the committee. (p. 36)  The whole report is written like that.  With a frankness that you simply do not see in Washington.

And boy did the CIA not like it. The Agency  attorney before the committee said, "Pike will pay for this, you wait and see...We will destroy him for this.  I'm serious. There will be political retaliation.  Any political ambitions in New York that Pike had are through.  We will destroy him for this." (p. 7)

It was no empty threat.  Pike's career was ended after this.  He chose not to run in 1978.  He knew what awaited him.

[Pat Speer]

The Unexpurgated Pike Report was eventually published in the states, by McGraw-Hill, in 1992. I stumbled across it in a book store, long after I'd consigned myself to reading the excerpts in the Voice.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Pat Speer

[Paul Rigby]

You can read - or join up & download - the report here:

https://archive.org/details/PikeCommitteeReportFull

 

[Jim Hargrove]

Remarkable!  You can download the whole thing in just about any format.  I chose PDF.

Megathanks, Paul!

[Douglas Caddy]

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2017-06-02/white-house-cia-pike-committee-1975?fbclid=IwAR1UR42j0cge6KoUSLMOX2Ec8Q6MAw7Q8PSGbGZzDkxufvzN_98rxLf-lvw

[Steve Thomas]

On 1/5/2019 at 11:33 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks for posting this Doug.

Those were the days were they not?  What disclosures, what publicity, what headlines.  Both in the House with Pike and the senate with Frank Church.

For the first time, the CIA and FBI were on the ropes.  It actually looked like the good guys, like Frank Church and Otis Pike, would win.

But as usual, power wins out.

 

Jim,

 

Take heart. We may be on the cusp of a similar historical shift. I was following the election returns on the night of the 2018 mid-term elections, and they were talking about the greatest turnover in American politics since the election of 1974 following Nixon's resignation. As Phillip Agee wrote in his introduction to the Pike Committee Report,

 

If nothing else, in the Committee's Recommendations in Part III, there is this:

 

I mean, that's a good thing, right?

*smile*

Thanks to everyone for making this available.

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

[Lawrence Schnapf]

Yesterday, I downloaded a 1975 Hearing discussing how the Warren Commission illegally classified its records. Belin testified along with the then head of NARA. Abzug really grilled NARA for going along with the illegal classification.

Then I found a 1976 Hearing by the House Judiciary Committee on FBI Oversight that obtained testimony on the Hosty destruction of the Oswald note.

I shared both with MFF for posting. 

[Benjamin Cole]

If I ever knew, I had forgotten about the Pike Report suppression.  

To this day, no ones seems to know what is the CIA "black budget." 

"Democracy Dies in Darkness" 

[David Boylan]

12 hours ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

Yesterday, I downloaded a 1975 Hearing discussing how the Warren Commission illegally classified its records. Belin testified along with the then head of NARA. Abzug really grilled NARA for going along with the illegal classification.

Then I found a 1976 Hearing by the House Judiciary Committee on FBI Oversight that obtained testimony on the Hosty destruction of the Oswald note.

I shared both with MFF for posting. 

Thanks Larry.

How would one find these at MFF?