Uncomfortable Parallels Entry

I've heard a lot of chatter recently wondering what Obama is going to do to expose Bush's misdeeds, or if he's going to do anything at all. And if the chatter is well-informed, it will mention Senator Church. So I figure now is the perfect time to revisit the Church Committee.

The Church Committee - properly the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities - was formed in 1975 to investigate the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. It was prompted in large part by the reports of Seymour Hersh, who disclosd that the CIA had investigated antiwar protesters and many others. You know, liberals. What the committee pursued at first was the CIA's attempted assassinations of foreign leaders. (Castro and Patrice Lumumba of the DR of the Congo) The CIA also encouraged dissidents to overthrow certain governments.

When the committee opened public hearings, Church brandished a gun at the first session. (Idahoans know how to kick ass.) If you're wondering what inspired my new profile pic, it is that gun. Specifically, this was a gun that could be used to fire poison darts. The CIA had plenty of deadly poisons on hand. (In my opinion, the CIA should have just gone to Australia and got box jellyfish.) The committee discovered other exciting stuff as well - for instance, communications companies provided the CIA with telegrams Americans sent abroad. (Today, the CIA routinely listens in on the calls of Americans abroad, or that Americans make to other countries.) The CIA often intercepted mail. You get the idea - lots of domestic surveillance, and the senators themselves were not exempt.

We should not forget something else: the pressure! Death threats! Bugs and wiretaps! Stonewalling! The relentless opposition of Ford and conservatives! Something more insidious arose as well - the idea that the Church committee was unpatriotic, that its very existence was aiding and abetting the Communists. The idea that "I don't have anything to hide, so go ahead and wiretap my phones! open my mail! etc." Now, these ideas did not suddenly arise with the Church committee, but they were encouraged by various right wing groups. You see the parallels, and I can promise you that Obama is under immense pressure to let bygones be bygones - the Bush administration left a big pile of doody, and Obama needs to clean it up. He - and Congress - have a big enough task before them as it is.

I actually have some sympathy for that idea, more than some of y'all might think. But, yanno, over the summer I read the entire report on the Columbia crash. (not the new report, the one that came out in 2004) When something important like the Columbia fails, you gotta find out why. If you don't, you risk another shuttle exploding. So - when prewar intelligence fails, or the economy fails, or (you can make your own list of Bush administration screwups here) - you gotta find out why. But the difference is that, with some of the Bush policies, our moral code failed. Torture is a moral issue to me. Spying on Americans is a moral issue to me. There should be inquiries, and we need to see how far the rot goes (all the way to Bush and Cheney, most likely) - but the more interesting question to me is, why is it perfectly reasonable to torture or to spy or whatever? Why do some people think that way? Are they right and am I totally off base - do we need to do whatever it takes to fight terrorism or communism?

Here's where I'm going - I want to look more deeply into the arguments against the Church committee. Sure, I think they're wrong. But those arguments sure are appealing to many people. Why? Also, I want to do a post on Church today. What would Frank Church think of our current mess? I have no idea, but I will enjoy speculating!

As kind of an amusing sidenote, the Church committee ran over schedule into 1976. That overrun was a problem, because Church ran for president that year. Really. He started his campaign really late, won a few primaries, lost the nomination, did not become Carter's VP. Carter faced a lot of problems in office, and it would have been interesting to see how Church would have handled those problems. Alas, Idaho has not had a presidential contender since then, and my main man Larry Craig is in no danger of becoming president.