Patrick Lawrence on The US Press, Spooks & the Church Committee

[Paul Brancato]

I’m actually rooting for that too, though we’re he by some miracle win the Dem nomination he would crush Trump. Because Democrats screaming about him now would vote for him anyway, as would many Republicans.

[Paul Rigby]

On 7/28/2023 at 8:57 PM, James DiEugenio said:

The Pike Committee, they could not even get their report published.  

Stop me if any of this seems familiar...

Pike accuses CIA of staging missing papers ‘media event’

Rep. Otis G. Pike (D., N.Y.), chairman of the expired House Intelligence Committee, March 9 accused the Central Intelligence Agency of “running a media event” aimed at discrediting him and his former committee. Pike’s remarks referred to CIA statements that the Pike Committee had failed to return 232 classified documents loaned to the committee. As described by a CIA spokesman, the documents included reports dealing with CIA purchasing and budget audits, the coup in Portugal, disarmament talks with the Soviet Union and other matters.

Pike said that 105 of the documents had been found by committee staff in the files where they were stored at CIA headquarters, and that for another 95 the CIA could produce no receipts from the committee. A CIA spokesman March 9 said that the recovery of the 105 documents had not been “verified;” he also insisted that the 95 documents  questioned by Pike had been supplied to the committee. George Bush, director of the CIA, March 16 rejected the idea that the CIA had tried to use reports of missing documents as a media weapon against Pike or the House Intelligence Committee.

Pike March 9 also said that the committee staff director, A. Searle Field, had told him that CIA special counsel Mitchell Rogovin had threatened political retaliation against Pike for leading his committee to vote for publication of its report, which was highly critical of the CIA. Pike said that Searle told him that Rogovin threatened: “Pike will pay for this, you wait and see – we’ll destroy him for this.” Rogovin March 9 denied ever having made any such threats against Pike.

Judith F. Buncher (Ed.), The CIA & the Security Debate: 1975-1976 (NY: Facts on File, Inc., 117)

[James DiEugenio]

Rogovin was correct, both Pike and Church were not long in Washington after their committees were forced under.

[Benjamin Cole]

20 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Rogovin was correct, both Pike and Church were not long in Washington after their committees were forced under.

Oh, sheesh. How long did Tucker Carlson last at Fox, after he started to explore CIA connections to the JFKA? 

That is the third rail.

And now the Biden Administration is fighting in court to preserve its ability to suffocate social media too. 

 

[James DiEugenio]

No, it was not just the JFK case.  Not with Pike and Church.

Those two committees exposed many, many of the operations of the CIA and Cointelpros of the FBI.

The whole battle against King and the Black Panthers was exposed for the first time. In fact the famous Black Messiah memo from Hoover was in the Church Committee volumes I think. As well as the Schweiker Hart report.  Schweiker made some really strong accusations at the time. According to Tanenbaum, in private when he met with him with his PI out of the room, he handed him a file and said words to the effect, "The CIA assassinated President Kennedy."  When I interviewed Schweiker, he said he did not say that, but I would not expect him to admit it since at that time he was a wealthy lobbyist.  He told me that his chief investigator, Dave Marston, probably said it. But Marston would not talk to me, his son begged him off due to his age.. And according to Bob, Marston was not there.

Church did not last out his term. Pike won one more election, and then retired. He saw the writing on the wall.  The CIA organized a whole campaign against the strongest members of both committees, and they used offshore money to beat them.  This was in a superb article in The Nation many years ago.

Edited July 30, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

30 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

No, it was not just the JFK case.  Not with Pike and Church.

Those two committees exposed many, many of the operations of the CIA and Cointelpros of the FBI.

The whole battle against King and the Black Panthers was exposed for the first time. In fact the famous Black Messiah memo from Hoover was in the Church Committee volumes I think. As well as the Schweiker Hart report.  Schweiker made some really strong accusations at the time. According to Tanenbaum, in private when he met with him with his PI out of the room, he handed him a file and said words to the effect, "The CIA assassinated President Kennedy."  When I interviewed Schweiker, he said he did not say that, but I would not expect him to admit it since at that time he was a wealthy lobbyist.  He told me that his chief investigator, Dave Marston, probably said it. But Marston would not talk to me, his son begged him off due to his age.. And according to Bob, Marston was not there.

Church did not last out his term. Pike won one more election, and then retired. He saw the writing on the wall.  The CIA organized a whole campaign against the strongest member of both committees, and they used offshore money to beat them.  This was in a superb article in The Nation many years ago.

Thank you, Jim, once again.  It seems Church, Schweiker and Hart were all pilloried.

[James DiEugenio]

The Pike and Church Committees were the apogees of inquiry into the secret operations of the CIA and FBI.

And man, they did not like it.

Fonzi always thought that they sidelined Schweiker by having Reagan choose him as his VP in 1976.

We all know what happened to Gary Hart.

But the way the CIA targeted the most active members of those two committees was really something.

They brought in all this money from offshore and set up a political campaign committee, and it was pretty active and effective.  For example they knocked off Church with some rightwing hack named Steve Symms.  If I recacll correctly, the titular leader of that PAC was Terry Dolan.

 

[Paul Brancato]

Can we all agree that the national security state first got rid of our leaders in the 60’s, decimated people’s power movements, and then when Congress investigated got rid of them too? It’s the only way to see clearly what has transpired since, and where we are today. We rarely see any news about CIA activities. 

[James DiEugenio]

Let us never forget what happened to the late prosecutor Dick Sprague.

BTW, Tanenbaum has a new book out about him called Coal Country Killing.

Its about how Sprague solved the Yablonski murders,  multi level conspiracy leading up to the UMW leader Tony Boyle.

Edited July 30, 2023 by James DiEugenio