Want to know. Since then members of congress have wanted to know. Congressional oversight of intelligence is a recurring flash point in executive congressional relations. Our guests professor Laura Donahue of Georgetown Law School and mark from the Security Academy and John Hopkins University will explore the context to the current dustup between the senate and the c. I. A. By not only reminding us about past struggles between congress and the Intelligence Community, such as the Church Hearings but helping us to understand why this context matters. Everything has a history. Until the 1975, Church Committee, there was no congressional oversight. Despite the sensationalism of the committees rev lyingses the mandated reforms were moderate. Once again, we have revelations demand for more intensive oversight. Nobody at least a good historian, will simply say history repeats itself and that is how we learn from it. We do know that it is impossible for us to understand change without context. Before we decide where to go, we have to understand how we got there and why we are where we are rather than any one of the numbers of the possible places where we could be. So i think we should start with laura. Laura donahue is professor at Georgetown Law School. Professor donahue has held female lowships at Stanford University of International Security and cooperation and Harvard Universitys john f. Kennedy of government where she was a fellow in the International Security program as well as the executive session for domestic preparety. In 2001, the caringny caren negy. We are not sure how he pronounces his name. She washer most recent book is the cost of Counter Terrorism power politics and liberty but she is now working on a book on quarantines which is different than what were talk about today. She has to put that work aside are you going to figure out thousand marry these two . No. He is Vice President of Evaluation National intelligence council, Deputy Assistant for intelligence. He is the author of the textbook on intelligence. Intelligence from secrets to policy now in its fifth edition. He serves as a professor at John Hopkins University. His book is a remind are about the importance of context because if i were to a completely different place and say he is the author of the textbook on intelligence, people would think he is an entirely different person. So context matters. We will start with laura and move on to mark. Each will speak for 15 minutes then we will open the floor to questions. Thank you very much. Thanks very much. I would like to thank professor jim grossman and dan kennedy for inviting me to speak on what promises to be an engaging conversation. I would lying to begin with explaining what led to the Church Committee hearings. If you take, first, a threat, at this point the cold war. Historians agree on very little. They dont agree on the years of the cold war but most people say 19471991, roughly. If you take a threat like that, rapid growth we had little Intelligence Community before the cold war and a rapid expansion in the bureaucracy. This plays a central war in what happened in the cold war and it came to public attention with the Church Committee. You have that fueled by an industrial engine, so private industry taking part in this. You have secrecy and rivalry and you add to that little or no oversight by congress and you have the recipe for disaster which is what happened. You had illegal investigative technique, improper target and part of it was put to improper political purposes. So today what i would like to speak to, is exactly what happened here. Im going to address the rapid growth of the community, post world war ii, talk about the excesses that were found, the investigations, and the reform effort that were put into place. The story begins in 1947 with the National Security act. This is legislation that established the m. M. E. , which i thought was fun yp picture was the department of defense. The National Military establishment. It also established the National Security council and most important today, it created the c. I. A. Now the c. I. A. Itself for the next 30 years, developed with little or no oversight. There are two key points to take away from this time point. First, science and technology had an enormous impact on intelligence at the time. So the dulles report led to the creation of the c. I. A. Had identified expertise as a weakness. In 1949, a Small Division of the agency was merged with a larger group, o. S. I. , and given a number of resources significant money, personnel, and able to take advantage of the new technologies. This led to the important spy satellites. This came from the c. I. A. Itself. Lockheeds black bird eventually, all of this came from the agency. Now the second key point about this lacking oversight and taking advantage of the new technologies, the c. I. A. Expanded into a number of programs that caused significant concerns. So weve heard about the special interrogation methods they developed. Just to give you an example of what these were like. In 195 3rbgs at a semi annual weapons meeting between the c. I. A. And the military, a c. I. A. Laced the drinks with l. S. D. 20 minutes the c. I. A. Said surprised we laced your drinks with l. S. D. And one of the military members became agitatedded and depressed and he later jumped out of the window of his hotel room to his death. No one was punished and the program continued. Similar tests were conducted on prisoners who were addicted to drugs and so on. It wasnt just the c. I. A. That was created. In 1952, they developed the Intelligence Agency. The National Security agency was in charge of electronic intelligence. 1960 we had them stand up. It wasnt until 1985 that the public knew they existed. It was not declassified until 1992. By 1996, they had a childrens page on their website where kids could go on and learn about n. R. O. It was four years after it was formally declassified. You had the it was Intelligence Agency stood up. Then various other agencies followed. The point to make is there were divisions and frictions between them. Very strong frictions. It was not clear its not clear whether this was good or bad historians come down on different sides, but what is clear is that a pattern of abuse emerged. National security became a trump card with this existential threat. There was rapid bureaucratic growth. All of the different intel agencies were trying to use the new technologies. You had an industrial engine behind this. Secrecy, the rivalry, and the lack of oversight that went on. I will give you a couple of other examples of programs that were put in place. Operation chaos was another cia program. This included surreptitious entry, recruitment of informers in domestic political groups, and warrantless wiretapping that occurred within the United States. The military ran an operation which maintains files on more than 100,000 political activist and orchestrated data exchanges between 350 military posts on domestic soil. The nsa had a number of programs under way. Operation shamrock is one of the largest domestic Surveillance Programs. It coopted Telecommunications Companies companies to Intercept International communications, international telegrams. That was the largest governmental interception of communications that had ever been undertaken. There were about 150,000 telegrams per month that were reviewed in on a watchlist that had been put together. The program was particularly concerning because it put the Telecommunications Companies in the position of breaking the law itself. It also ran project minaret which put organizations involved in Civil Service is under investigation of surveillance. One thing to note about many of these programs as they gradually expanded. This is one of the lessons of history programs always start out very limited targeted at certain individuals, and then it expands over time to include others. Initially, project minaret which the nsa ran, was focused on american citizens traveling to and from cuba. Then it was extended to people that threaten the president. The office of president ial personnel wanted to include other people. The fbi at a domestic and foreign entities saying that they were extremist persons and groups. Individuals and groups acted in civil disturbances and terrorists. That was essentially the antiwar movement. The bureau of narcotics and dangerous drugs extended the agreement to include the abuse of narcotics and dangerous drugs, so anybody who was taking drugs or dealing in drugs. In 1971, the executive branch asked the nsa to monitor International Terrorism and by the end of 1971, the program had extended to include all criminal activity as well as foreign support for or basing of subversive that committee. This program did not end until october 1973 until after the nsa had placed, really, thousands hundreds of thousands of americans under surveillance. What is interesting as we hear from the hearings that these were relatively ineffective, despite the massive accumulation and gathering of intelligence, and ideology really became a driving force in the programs execution. These were not the only programs. The fbi ran a famous one from 1936 to 1976, and it was aimed at leftleaning organizations. This is a process of infiltrating organizations and studying the information about the members so that they would lose their jobs. As the Church Committee later wrote, they caused antiwar activist to be evicted from their homes, disabled their cars, intercepted their mail, wiretaps and bugs in their conversations, prevented them from renting facilities, incited others to harass them, and disrupted peaceful organizations. Like minaret, the targets gradually expanded for this program. Initially, it was just the communist party, but then it expanded to the socialist workers party, the kkk, other area in aryan organizations. By the late 1960s, the black nationalist Group SouthernChristian Leadership Council the student nonviolent coordinating committee. We had prominent members of the Civil Rights Movement as well as senators and congressional movements who were placed under surveillance. There were various other projects under way. I will not i will not go into detail. Some of them involve the irs or a legal art it illegal audits. The surveillance of Library Records was another program. Some of the programs ranged on the absurd. The cia used psychics basically, in california to try to find out how many planes were on the tarmac in moscow, for instance. Turns out when they could check with their satellites, they were not very accurate, so they could quote so they closed the program down. I dont know how may people have heard of acoustic kitty. This is where the cia took a cat and tried to train the cat to go into the Russian Embassy, and they surgically alter the cat to put listening devices in the cat, and when they drove up outside the Russian Embassy and released the cat, as it crossed the street, it got hit by a taxi. I have the final report. The conclusion is it is very difficult to train cats. And perhaps a better system could be devised to actually place embassies under surveillance. These are some examples of what came up in this. What was the broader context . Remember in the early 1970s, there were few restrictions on these agencies. The Supreme Court happy to discuss it later basically punted on the question of anything involving foreign intelligence and said that it was really kind of up to the political branches to decide this particular issue, and there are strong constitutional reasons for them doing this at the time. Politically, senator sam irving started his investigations at the time chipping away at the military. Then you have the lien act of 1974, which put war power limitations on cia funds. Then, of course, watergate. What happens is we have a severely weakened executive branch, so congress has an opportunity to step into this i dont want to say of this. I dont want to say abyss. That sums to depressing. They have an opportunity now to do something about this. The murphy report saying that the Intelligence Community is badly broken. So we start to have a number of inquiries. There is a match that lights this fire, and that match is a newspaper article. A release in the new york times, a story about the cia talking about the family jewels. Hersh starts detailing of december 1974 a list of abuses that had been going on within the cia. This is the match that lights that on fire that suddenly explodes and everybody starts getting in. And subjecting these practices to greater scrutiny. So you have the Rockefeller Commission, which is appointed just after that. That is led by Vice PresidentNelson Rockefeller as a direct response to the family jewels. They also put together a congressional response to try to take away the political steam for that. This commission looks at the cia mail opening, domestic surveillance. And various other aspects. And you have a Pie Commission really the house effort to look at these processes in more detail to see what was happening the pike commission. There are significant tension from the beginning. The records are really colorful accounts, shall we say of the committee chairman. He was seen as stalling and stonewalling really, so he gets removed in june 1975 and is replaced with hike tyke pike who turns out to be a difficult character. And, of course, the Church Committee. We have a bipartisan effort chaired by Senator Frank Church with the existence of senator john tower from texas. Membership is 11 senators, so there are sick strong from the majority, five from the minority party, and the Senate Overwhelmingly supports the creation of the Church Committee. 824 is the vote. The Senate Directs that the committee do two things first that it investigate illegal, improper, or unethical activities in which the Intelligence Community engaged throughout that time, and then to determine the need for specific legislative authority. The committee went on to take testimony from hundreds of people inside and outside of government and public and private hearings. The nsa, the fbi, the cia, other federal agencies also pedophiles to the hearing. In 1975 all submitted files to the hearing. I frequently reread these because there is so much in these hearings and so much to learn about how the process works and what went wrong. Since 1992, another 50,000 pages have been declassified and made publicly available at the national archives, and what they found was that there was a broad spread Surveillance Program there were broad spread Surveillance Programs under way, and there had a number of abuses. The impact of the Church Committee as well as the Rockefeller Commission and the Pike Committee its hard to identify just one of these. Even the Murphy Commission you could say that that led to executive order 11 905, but i would like to highlight 4 outcomes when they discover this information, and then i will turn it over to my colleague. First, i would like to talk about executive order 11 905. This was issued by president ford, and this band political assassination. That was one of the most important things it did. It also created a new command structure for foreign intelligence organizations. It upgraded the cia Inspector General and the legal office, so this is another interesting we can talk about this. Some of the offices are not on a statutory basis, and you might want to do that. That is one thing that they did at the time. I also required he cia Inspector General to be involved in internal oversight. The executive order 11 90 five created in intelligence Oversight Board for the Intelligence Community. Membership could be overlapping but it created a different structure at the time. Of course, carter followed this with his executive order 12036 in 1978 which upheld the ban on political assassination. The Church Committee had been constituted in january 1975. The Church Committee t