Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

ship has continued unabated and now encompasses counterterrorism

as a liaison issue. See alsoCHIN, LARRYWU-TAI.

CHURCH COMMITTEE. Officially known as the Senate Select

Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to

Intelligence Activities, the Church Committee was established in

1975 to conduct wide-ranging investigations of U.S. intelligence

agencies in the post-Watergateperiod. Named after its chairman

Idaho senator Frank Church, the committee took public and private

testimony from hundreds of people; collected volumes of files from

the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence

Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Internal Revenue

Service (IRS), and many other federal agencies; and issued 14 reports

in 1975 and 1976. Church Committee reports specifically focused on

U.S. attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, such as Cuba’s Fidel

Castro; the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba; the Dominican Republic’s

Rafael Trujillo; South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem; and Rene Schnei-

der, commander in chief of the Chilean army, who opposed a military

coup against Salvador Allende. In its final report in 1976, the

Church Committee endorsed President Gerald R. Ford’s ban,

through Executive Order 11905, on government-sanctioned assassi-

nations. The Church Committee in 1976 evolved into the Senate Se-

lect Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). See alsoINTELLIGENCE

OVERSIGHT; SENATE RESOLUTION 400.

CHURCH, FRANK FORRESTER (1924–1984).Frank Church was

the Democratic senator from Idaho who in 1975 chaired the Senate

Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Re-

spect to Intelligence Activities. His committee publicly revealed

plots by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to assassinate world

leaders, a coup against Chile’sMarxist president Salvador Allende,

and covert actionsagainst radical groups in the United States. He be-

came famous for calling the CIAa “rogue elephant” in the belief that

the agency acted from the 1950s through the 1970s independently of

any oversightby the executive or legislative branches. He later re-

tracted the allegation because his committee found no evidence to

support the charge that the CIAacted without orders. His committee

made 100 recommendations including curbing illegal wiretaps, mail

CHURCH, FRANK FORRESTER•27

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