Reply #1: The Church Committee Investigation on CIA & press [View All]

The Church Committee Investigation

A flurry of public attention began to cast doubts upon the ethics of a press wedded to the Central Intelligence Agency after a Washington Star-News story by Oswald Johnson reported that the CIA had three dozen American newsmen on its payroll at that time (November 1973). Then-CIA director William Colby (CFR) leaked this information to Johnson, fearing an embarrassing fallout after both the Star-News and New York Times approached him to ask if any of their staff members were receiving payments from the Agency. (A Times investigation four years later showed the number of CIA-funded journalists to be closer to 50; Bernstein's expose in Rolling Stone that same year claimed it was more like 400.)

By now, the times they had a-changed: In a 1974 article in the Columbia Journalism Review, former reporter Stuart Loory chastised fellow journalists for their history of chumming it up with the CIA and for their lax coverage of the issue once it came to light. "There is little question that if even one American overseas carrying a press card is paid by the CIA, then all Americans with those credentials are suspect," he wrote. "We automatically... consider Soviet and Chinese newsmen as mouthpieces and informants for their governments, while at the same time congratulating ourselves for our independence. Now we know that some of that independence has, with the stealth required of clandestine operations, been taken away from us -- or given away."

In 1975, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence headed by Frank Church (the Church Committee) focused its attention on the Agency's use of American news outlets. The CIA went to great lengths to curtail this part of the committee's investigation, though, and some members of the committee later admitted that the Agency was able to get the upper hand. Colby and his successor, George Bush (CFR, TC), were able to convince the Senate that a full inquiry would cripple their intelligence-gathering capabilities and would unleash a "witch-hunt" on the nation's reporters, editors and publishers.

"The Agency was extremely clever about it and the committee played right into its hands," one congressional source told Carl Bernstein. "Church and some of the other members were much more interested in making headlines than in doing serious, tough investigating. The Agency pretended to be giving up a lot whenever it was asked about the flashy stuff -- assassinations and secret weapons and James Bond operations. Then, when it came to things they didn't want to give away, that were much more important to the Agency, Colby in particular called in his chits. And the committee bought it."

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