The Senate Permanent select Intelligence Committee, providing ongoing oversight of the intelligence agencies, and the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 19 28, which we know as fisa. Two former Staff Members of the Church Committee are with us and will be with us to help provide Historical Context and help us understand the significance of the 40yearold video you are about to see. Frederick Fritz Schwartz is with our studio is elliot maxwell, who was counsel to the committee. Thank you to both of you for joining us. Lets just start with the basics, mr. Maxwell, could you explain how the Church Committee got constituted . What was the impetus . Mr. Maxwell most of it came about from a series of articles with activities by the Intelligence Community within the United States and followed by many people. This was in the context of the postwatergate resignation of president nixon. By still continuing the vietnam war there was the thought that the intelligence agencies would be directed against american citizens and this led to some public concern and the response in both the senate and the house to establish a special committee to look at activities overall. It was in that context that you need to be able to place the activities of the committee and the response to things that happened during the vietnam war, the civil rights movement, and other activities that led to the creation of these two committees. Mr. Schwartz when, what was the mandate or the mission as was constituted . Mr. Schwarz this was to look at the facts and to expose them to the american public. Our single most important you mentioned this was in the aftermath of watergate. Some people thought we would just expose more bad things about the next in administration, but our single most important finding was to say that every one of six president s starting with Franklin Roosevelt and running through nixon, four democrats and two republicans, everyone one of them had abused their secret powers, and making that broad finding, which is our most important finding, helping with the internal cohesion of the committee and help with national reputation. How were frank church and john power selected as the chairman and republican vice chair of the committee . Mr. Maxwell mansfield selected frank church. The story is that he asked phil hart to do it that phil hart was ill and died of cancer are not too long afterwards, although he served on the committee, and the minority leader, scott, selected power. Interestingly, of the 11, none of them had been people who are responsible for the prior generation of inadequate oversight by the congress of dcia and the fbi and the other intelligent agencies. So you had a group of 11 people who came at this without bias, having had supposedly sponsor ability earlier and having failed as the congress did, to exercise really any oversight over the Intelligence Community before we did our work. Mr. Maxwell, i want to read for our audience the names of the 11 committee members, because these are some very famous, wellknown names, and these are powerful names in the United States senate. Phil hart, who was just mentioned. Walter mondale, the former Vice President of United States, Walter Huddleston of kentucky, Robert Morgan of kentucky, and on the republican side, howard baker, who went to be the majority leader, Barry Goldwater, and how did these 11, big figures, he get to become respective leaders, and what were the things that came to putting these respective leaders into place and what was expected of them on the panel . Mr. Maxwell i wasnt privy to these discussions but my sense was they chose people who had stature within the institution and within the nation that this would be considered a product of the senate and the associated stature of the members. For me it was really extraordinary in the sense that they were presented a very Broad Spectrum of views from the most conservative to the most liberal in the senate at the time and i think that the chair of the vice chair were making sure that they could move together. Was mentioned earlier about the desire to make this a unified finding about these activities in both the choice of the chair and the choice of the members. Mr. Schwarz , i wanted to talk about how the committee met mr. Schwarz, i wanted to talk about how the committee met for 14 months. What was the strategy regarding television on the hearings . Mr. Schwarz well, the first choice we made, obviously, the committee made its own discussions on the start about what would be confidential, but the first decision that was made was the plots to assassinate foreign leaders like fidel castro and other people, there was a discussion about whether those hearings should be public or not, and actually, howard baker, who was a very Effective Member of the committee, push for public hearings and frank church said, no, i think we are wiser not to have public hearings, these will be our first hearings and you dont want to inadvertently put out stuff that should be kept confidential. We should put it all in our report on assassinations, which we did. It was the most exhaustive coverage of covert actions. Then when we got to domestic terrorists, those were all public domestic issues, those were all public. The fbi was the subject of most of those domestic hearings and i think most of our important work was exposing the illegal and the Improper Conduct that the fbi under J Edgar Hoover had engaged in under j. Edgar hoover had engaged in. For decades. Those were all public. Our reports were public and in the domestic report, which was called book two, everything that we wanted to put out we put out. In the foreign report, there was some things were some things that were not included in the final report but that were available to all of the senators, but by far we had the most disclosure of any committee that has ever been in any committee dealing with intelligence in any country and that is still true to date all of the world. A side note on television and sender baker when he became the majority leader in 1981 after the election of Ronald Reagan, the first measure he put into the senate was television in the senate because he was interested in having the senate televised. We are about to show the video, but we live in an age of cspan, but prior to that, the decision to have Committee Hearings on Network Television was a big deal. What was the sense of the country in news reporting and the interest level about all of these hearings as they were happening . Mr. Maxwell well, i think there was a considerable amount of interest because the subject matter was themselves the , relationship between the citizens and the committee. Little was known about it when we began the committee, at least on the foreign intelligence side, nobody knew what to request, nobody knew what was there. Nobody knew how to ask the right questions. So when the hearings took ways, it was in the context of, this was new to the public. What these agencies were doing, how they were doing it, the impact on themselves, the impact on their friends and family and neighbors and the rest of the world. This was the first time that the curtain had been drawn at all of these agencies, so i think it was inherently interesting for the public. In todays installment of our video on the Church Committees, were going to look at something called the huston plan. We are going to hear the Church Committee question Tom Charles Huston in 1975 in the Senate Caucus room. Lets watch. You dont deny that the United States should commence, as you understood it to commence or to recommence, is that correct . Mr. Huston yes, it was my understanding that this was the technique employed, particularly within the fbi, and within the Intelligence Committee and they thought it was necessary to be undertaken with an extreme circumstances and that they felt that they were authorized to do so. Mr. Schwarz you were also basing your views upon the entire Intelligence Committee, advocating that the United States should commence or recommence to commit burglary to acquire valuable intelligence information. Is that right . Mr. Huston yes, i was told that we were taking these jobs over a that the bureau had undertaken black bag jobs for a number of years up until 1966, that it had been successful and valuable, again, particularly in matters involving espionage, and they felt that again, it was something that given the revolutionary climate, they felt they needed to have the authority to do. And there you can see mr. Schwarz questioning mr. Huston in 1975. So, mr. Schwarz, who was mr. Huston . What was his plan . It was devised in the white house and with most of the Intelligence Community to get president ial lessing for the illegal things that have been done for years and years and years. And eventually, it fizzled out, but the intent was to legalize what had been done and which was illegal. Huston gave us an absolutely fantastic quote and i think in my interrogation of him later i used it, what he said when you start these programs, you always have mission creep, and his language was, you go from the kid with the bomb to the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the Bumper Sticker of the opposing candidate and you go from looking at dangerous activity to migrating to looking at the political views of people in this country, of americans, and the nsa did the same thing. They got every single telegram that left the country for 30 years, it was given to nsa. At the beginning, their objective was only to look at encrypted cables from foreign embassies back to, like from the Russian Embassy back thomas ago tech to moscow, but there was the very thing that huston admitted to me in a very language, there was mission creep, so we were looking at cables of antivietnam war protesters within the United States and of civil rights leaders in the United States, something which the government had absolutely no business looking at and certainly not looking at in a legal way. These telegrams are an agent thing for some of our younger viewers, so could you put into context what it would mean today to read every single telegram within the United States . Mr. Maxwell well, it is easy enough to do that given the last two or three years after the Edward Snowden discussions. That is an externa rethink to have if you want to look at the the Intelligence Community access to the metadata to telephone calls and the like so who wascould tell communicating to who. That is an extraordinary thing that have if you want to look at the activities of people and it is the kind of notion of people what they are talking about. If i scoop up enough of this material, sooner or later im going to find this thing. All of this material could go beyond that original thought, so it is not the kind of technology that is employed, it is the notion that you could scoop everything in and then work from that. In a little while, we are going to see 40 minutes of charles houston of Tom Charles Huston testifying. But listless and the Barry Goldwater. Lets watch. Mr. Goldwater thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to speak first about the Internal Revenue service, and i am very happy that the chairman has mentioned this. Someone on this committee has likened the cia like a bull elephant running rampant or the irs like a rattlesnake slithering along in the grass, probably the greatest threat to American Freedom and americans and yet this morning, it is the first public indication that i have heard that the Internal Revenue service is going to be investigated, and i think it is time. Mr. Maxwell, what was the intent of bringing the irs into the investigation . Mr. Maxwell i think the republican side encompassed the entire range of the political spectrum on the republican party, from mac matthias and diction whites are and dick schweizer. For Barry Goldwater, the irs was a snake and he wanted to make sure it was part of the investigation and not shunted aside. That was not part of the case for priorities for the other senators. We only have a few minutes before we begin showing 40 full minutes of questioning of Tom Charles Huston. I would like to have you kind of go back to that moment in time and particularly, the significance of people watching today. What is it that you would like people to think about this in terms of constitutional questions or americans relationships with their government in review of this testimony . Mr. Schwarz i think the American People should be bothered anytime the American Government exceeded power and does so without the American Government knowing what it is doing. So the american citizen should be free of fear that their government is doing things to harm them, to collect excessive information, now we never on the Church Committee said the government shouldnt collect any information. It was that the government shouldnt collect information without going through a proper process to develop the right, for example, or a judge saying this is legitimate to do so, the irs, just to go back to this, was a legitimate subject of inquiry, and i thought we brought out some very disturbing facts. Again, this shows the nonpartisan side of the committee. For example, we show that john kennedy as president had done things to try and get the irs to go after particular people and we had a quite cooperative witness who was of the head of the irs and we brought out a lot of information. Senator goldwater was good on that issue. He was not someone is interested in the rest of our work. In fact, i think he was less interested than all of the other senators who were profoundly interested. Senator goldwater even first urged that we should investigate the fbis treatment of Martin Luther king week as if he said we do that, quote, they will riot, and after we discovered that they tried to convince Martin Luther king to commit suicide by sending him a composite tape of recordings taken of king in various hotel rooms, i said to the committee, i have not looked at the tape, nor have i let anybody on the staff look at the tape, because to do so was not less a serine not necessary to make our point. And then Barry Goldwater said something that i think was very disappointing. He said i think we should get that tape and play it on national television. So i am making those comments a little bit in criticism of senator goldwater all of the other 10 senators constantly worked very hard and were very interested in all of our issues. And there never was a purely partisan vote and in general was in great cooperation. I regarded myself as the chief counsel for the whole committee and not the chief counsel for the democrats. I felt i was chief counsel for the whole committee. And talking about senator schweiker, senator schweiker i think had the best record of any senator of always wanting to do what we thought was the most appropriate thing to do. Will thank you for that background and introduction. Today, the senate Intelligence Committee still has a reputation for acting in bipartisan issues, so it is something with a Historical Context as a committee. So at this point, thank you to both of you for setting the stage for this part of the investigation. We are now going to show 40 minutes as the Church Committee investigates the huston clan. This was televised in 1975 by the public broadcasting service. Lets watch. Did you admit to the president certain recommendations with respect on intelligence collections . Mr. Huston yes. Mr. Schwarz and have you got in front of you the document . Mr. Huston yes. Mr. Schwarz is that the document in which you gave the president . Mr. Huston well, which i submitted to mr. Hall. Mr. Schwarz which you gave to mr. Hall . Mr. Huston yes. Mr. Schwarz in the document, you made certain recommendations with restraints in which you thought had been placed upon the intelligence collection. Is that correct . Mr. Huston yes. Mr. Schwarz in making those recommendations, do you believe you were making a consensus within the entire working group on the study for yourself and for the president . Mr. Huston yes. Mr. Schwarz so whatever recommendations you made in respect to it illegal openings of the mail or burglary or forced entry, were one in which you believe represented the view of the entire Intelligence Community, with the exception of the footnotes mentioned . Mr. Huston yes. Mr. Schwarz you did recommend, did you not, that the