Frank Church, Deep State: The True Story of the Senator Who Took on the CIA and Its Corporate Clients

The Intercept Briefing

The Intercept

Politics, Unknown, Daily News, History, News

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2023

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nearly 50 years ago, the Church Committee began holding hearings to investigate the CIA and U.S. intelligence agencies’ lawless and secret efforts to spy on and plan assassination plots. This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill is joined by James Risen and Thomas Risen to discuss how the CIA — without oversight from Congress and at times behind the backs of U.S. presidents — orchestrated coups against popular democratic governments from Guatemala to Iran and spied on anti-war activists and Black Power leaders inside the U.S. It was not until the Democratic Sen. Frank Church decided to take on this unaccountable, powerful, covert force within the U.S. national security apparatus that some of the CIA’s crimes and abuses came into public view. Sen. Church chaired a committee in 1975 that sought to reign in the CIA and impose laws and rules for their conduct. A new book by James Risen and Thomas Risen, called “The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys — and One Senator’s Fight to Save Democracy,” tells the story of the man behind the Church Committee and how an unlikely hero emerged to battle the most powerful secret entity in the U.S. government.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is intercepted.
0:30.0	Welcome to Intercepted, I'm Jeremy Skahill.
0:48.0	I'm sure many of you recall that earlier this year there was a showdown over the house
0:53.5	along with the boys at후weraat the back of the house, according to Christian
1:14.7	Title, the idea that you have this new generation of anti-imperialist lawmakers, many of whom
1:20.7	just happen to be loyal to Donald Trump and his movement.
1:24.3	While some members of the Freedom Caucus do consistently take on serious issues that
1:28.6	should be confronted, including on war, civil liberties, and the increasing power of tech
1:34.1	companies, this newly launched select subcommittee to investigate the, quote, weaponization of
1:40.0	the federal government, it's not being established to engage in the kind of rigorous investigation
1:45.8	embodied by the House Committee on Assassinations or by the Church Committee in 1975.
1:52.6	This new committee, it's clear, is going to largely be a partisan lala-pollusa of wacky
1:58.8	theories and totally hypocritical attacks.
2:02.6	What's notable, however, is that by taking on issues that have long been associated with
2:07.6	the political left in the United States, these Republicans who've been banging the drums
2:12.7	about the deep state have unmasked just how much the established power within the current
2:19.4	Democratic Party actually reveres the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the broader national
2:27.1	security state.
2:28.5	New Congress new subcommittees, in a partisan vote, House Republicans this week approved
2:33.3	the creation of the Select Committee on the weaponization of the federal government.
2:38.2	The vague resolution that created the committee gives it the authority to broadly investigate
2:42.2	the executive branch and any federal agency that falls under its control.
	...

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