Transcripts For CSPAN3 Tom Charles Huston Church Committee T

CSPAN3 Tom Charles Huston Church Committee Testimony May 30, 2016

Variety of reasons. So the legislative portion of those reviews never reached fruition. There were a number of internal reviews and internal changes that took place as a result of the Church Committee inquiry and later the and that person has to report to kblg about what it finds about what he or she finds to be the problem internally. Kate scott, thank you. Thank you. Our coverage, 40 years later continues. This is American History tv only on cspan 3. 40 years ago they created a committee to look into the u. S. Intelligence services. They had a long title. The Senate Select committee with respect to intelligence activities. It took on the nickname of its chairman and best known to historys the Church Committee. It called 800 witnesses and the legacy includes the Senate Select Intelligence Committee providing ongoing oversight of the intelligence agencies and the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 which we know as fisa. Two former staffers are with us and will be with us to provide context of the 40yearold video you are about to see. Here in our studio in washington is the council to the committee as the dez me in. Thank you for joining us. Lets start with the basics. Will you explain how it got constituted . Most were within the United States written and followed up by many other people. That was in the context of the post watergate hearings and resignation of president nixon by still continuing about the vietnam war and the thought led to public concern and the response between thes en senate and the house overall. It was in that context that you need to place the committee and the response to things that happened and other Political Activities led to the creation of the two committees. What was the mandate or mission as it was constituted . It was to look into the facts and develop the facts and expose them to the American Public. Some people thought we would expose more bat things, but the single most important finding is to say starting with franklin radios velt, everyone one had accused their powers. By making that brought finding which was the most important, it helped with the special cohesion and respected with the national reputation. How were they selected as the chairman and republican vice chair of the committee . Mansfield collected frank church. Phil hart was ill and died of cancer not too long afterwards. Although he served on the committee. The minority leader selected tower. Interestingly of the 11, none of them had been people who were responsible for the prior generation of inadequate oversight of the congress of pcia and the fbi and the other intelligence agency. From having had supposed responsibility earlier and having failed as the congress did to exercise really any oversight of the community before we did our work. I want to read for the audience. And they will recognize. Be sides those who i mentioned, phil hart and walter mondale, Vice President of the United States. Walter hubbleston of kentucky and Robert Norton and harry hart from colorado. Howard baker who went on to be the majority leader. Barry gold water. Charles mathias of maryland and dick shwiker in pennsylvania. How did these 11 big figures get chosen by the respective leaders. What was the thinking in constituting these individuals and what would they expect the outcome to be . I was not privy tow those discussions, but my sense is they chose people who had stature within the institution and within the nation. This would be and they had associated stature of the members. For me it was extraordinary in the sense that it represented a brought spectrum of views from the most conservative to the most liberal at the time. And what fritz said earlier about the desire to make it a unified finding. It was the choice in the chair and the choice of the members. Our program in American History tv will center around video as it must. I wanted to talk to you about the television aspect of these hearings. I mentioned that the subcommittee and full committees met for 16 months and over the course of time, they had 126 full Committee Hearings and 40 subCommittee Hearings. Only a portion of those were before television cameras. What was the strategy regarding television of the hearings . Obviously their own discussions would be confidential, but the first choice was when we investigated the plots to assassinate foreign leaders like castro and other people, there was a discussion about whether those hearings should be public or not. Howard baker who was a very Effective Member of the committee pushed for public hearings and frank church said we are wiser not to have public hearings. This will be the first hearings and you dont want to inadvertently put out stuff that should be kept confidential. Thats the most covert they have ever been. When we got to the domestic hearings, those were all public. The fbi was by far the most important of our domestic hearings and i frankly think overall our most important work was exposing the illegal and Improper Conduct that the fbi under J Edgar Hoover engaged in for decades. Those were all public. The public and of course our reports were public and in the domestic report which was called book two, everything we wanted to put out was put out. In the foreign report, there were some things which were not included in the final report and were available to all 100 senators. In general we had by far the most disclosure of any committee that there ever has been dealing with intelligence either in this country and thats still true to date or in the rest of the world. As a side note on television and the decision, senator baker when he became the majority leader after the election of ronald reagan, the first measure he put in was television at the senate. He was consistent in having them televised. That was a big deal. What was the sense of the hearings. There was a considerable amount because the subject matter was themselves. The relationship between citizens and intelligence. Little was known when we began the meetings of the committee. Nobody knew what to request and how to ask the right questions. What these agencies were doing and how they were doing it. And this was the first time the curtain had been drawn at all. It was inherently interesting for the public. Todays installment on the Church Committee, we will focus on the investigation of something called the houston plan. We will begin by showing you a clip from the hearings. Questioning witness tom charles houston on september 23rd, 1975. Lets watch. You did recommend that the United States should commence as you understood it the illegal opening of mail, is that correct . Yes. My understanding from my contact was the bureau. It was that in the past this had been a technique that was employed particularly in matters relating to espionage and the Intelligence Community intricated they thought it was the necessary technique to be undertaken under extreme circumstances and they felt that they should be authorized to do so. Similarly you also are basing your views on the recommendations of the Intelligence Community except for the footnotes advocated that the United States should commence or recommence to commit burglaries to acquire valuable intelligence information. Is that right . Yes. I was told the bureau had undertaken black bag jobs over a number of years until 1966. It had been successful and valuable again, particularly in members involving espionage and they felt this again was something that given the climate they thought they needed to have the authority to do. Fritz schwartz at work questioning tom houston in 1975. Who was tom houston and what was the houston plan . The houston plan was something that was devised in the white house and with most of the Intelligence Community to get president ial blessing for the illegal and that was for years and years and years. It fizzled out, but the intent was to legalize what had been done and which was illegal. Houston gave us a fantastic quote and i assume somewhere later in that examination i used it. When you start these programs you also have the commission. 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. Nsa did the same thing. They got every telegram and was given to nsa. At the beginning, their objective was only to look at and in the embassy back to moscow. If houston admitted in the language, there was mission creek. They started looking at the cables of antivietnam war protesters in the United States and civil rights leaders in the United States. They had no business looking at and essential not in an illegal way. Telegrams are in each of the things for many of the younger viewers. Can you say what it would mean today to read every telegram that is leaving the United States . Its easy enough to do that given what happened over the last two or three years after Edward Snowdens revelations. They had access to the meta data with telephone calls and the like. To who was communicating with whom. Thats extraordinary to have if you want to look at activities of the people. It was the same kind of notion. People thought if i scoop up enough of this color, somewhere im going to find important things. Its not the kind of technology that is employed, its a notion that you can sweep everything in and work from that. We are going to see 40 minutes of charles houston, but we would like to show a short clip. This is arizona senator barry gold water and talking about the Internal Revenue service this this clip. Lets watch. I want to speak about the and the bull elephant and liken it to a rattle snake sliding along in the grass. Probably the greatest threat to American Freedom and americans of anything we have and yet this morning as the first indication that the Internal Revenue will be investigated and i think its time. You sat on the republican side and what was the intent of bringing the irs into the investigation. The republican side encompassed the entire range of the political spectrum of the republican party. From mathias to barry gold water and john tower. And the concerns of the republican senators differed astronaut. The irs was just that. A snake and he wanted to make sure that that was part of the investigation and not shunted aside. That was not the case for the priorities for some of the other senators. We have a few minutes before we show 40 full minutes of your questioning for tom charles houston. Particularly significance for people watching today. What is it that you would like people to think about. The American Public should be bothered any time the government exceeds and does so secretly without even the congress knowing what its doing. And so the american citizen should be free of fear that the government and excessive information. We never said that the government shouldnt collect it. The government shouldnt collect information without going through a proper process to develop the right or a judge saying this is legitimate to do so. The irs was a legitimate subject of inquirey and i brought out disturbing facts and again this shows the nonpartisan side. We showed that john kennedy had done things to try to get the irs to go after particular people. We had a quite couldntive witness who was head of the irs. Senator gold water was good on that issue. He was not someone as interested in the rest of the work. I think he was less interested than all the other senators who were profoundly interested and senator gold water first urged we should not investigate the fbis treatment of dr. Martin luther king because if we do that, they will riot. After we discovered that the fbi had tried to get 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 had not looked at the tape nor had i let anybody on the staff look at the tape. To do so was not necessary to make our point. Then senator gold water and something i thought was very, very disappointing said i think fritz is wrong. We should get that tape and play it on national television. So im making those comments a little bit in criticism of senator gold water. All the other ten senators i thought constantly worked very hard and were very interested in all our issues. There never was a purely partisan vote. In general there was great cooperation. I regarded myself as chief council for the whole committee and not chief council for the democrats. I felt i was chief council for the whole committee and talking about elliotts senator, senator shwiker. He i think had the best record of any senator of always wanting to do what we thought was the most appropriate thing to do. Thank you for the background and among the committees, they still have a reputation for acting most often in bipartisan. Thats something that has been a context for the committee. At this point thanks to both of you for setting the stage for the houston part of the investigation and we are going to show 40 minutes as they investigate the houston plan and this was televised september 23rd, 1975 by the public broadcasting service, pbs. Lets watch. Did you submit to the president certain recommendations with respect to the restraints on intelligence collection . Yes. Have you got the document from our books some. Yes. Is that the document which you did submit to the president . Which i submitted to mr. Hall. For transmission to the president , is that right . In that document, you make recommendations with respect to changing restraints which you thought had been placed upon intelligence correction, is that right . Yes. In making the recommendations, did you believe you were accept centing the consensus of the working group that had worked on the studies for yourself and for the president . Yes. So whatever recommendations you made with respect to illegal openings of the mail or burglaries or entry were ones that you believe represented the views of the entire Intelligence Community with the exception of the footnotes of mr. Hoover himself . Yes. You did recommend, did you not, that the United States should commence in your view as you understood it or recommence the illegal opening of mail. Is that correct . Yes. My understanding from my contact with the bureau and through the working committee was in the past this had been a technique that had been employed, particularly in matters relating to espionage and professional Intelligence Community indicated they thought it was a necessary technique to be undertaken under extreme circumstances and that they felt they should be authorized to do so. Similarly you also based on your views on the recommendations except for mr. Hoovers footnotes advocated that the United States should commence or recommence to commit burglaries to acquire valuable intelligence information. Is that right . Yes. I told the bureau had undertaken a black bag jobs over a number of years until 1966. It had been successful and valuable in matters involving espionage. They felt that given the revolutionary climate, they thought they needed the authority to do. In both cases, your position and their position was in effect that the end justifies the means. Im not going to speak for what their position is, but i dont think that fairly summarizes my position. Im sure some of the other purposes here are going to question you on that issue. Did president nixon approve the recommendations for change which you made on behalf of the Intelligence Community . Yes. What happened after that . The question arose as to how the decisions were to be implemented. I recommended that i felt that the president ought to call the directors back into his office and for him in person. It seemed to me that that was the proper course to cake particularly in view of the sensitivity of the decisions relative to mr. Hoover. However the president didnt think that was necessary. So then the question became how should a decision memorandum go out. He seemed to think it was not necessary for either he or the president to do that. I was nominated. You sent it out . Yes, i did. Over my signature. This document represented your proposal to the president for lifting oro laxing certain restraints on the Intelligence Community with respect to gathering information on what you called the revolutionary climate. I would suppose that had reference to the antiwar demonstrations and the group. Senator, i was peripherally interested in the antiwar demonstrations and i was concerned about the 40,000 bombings that took place. I was concerned about the 39 Police Officers killed. Yes. And everything connected with that. Thats what im talking about. Revolutionary violence as opposed to antiwar demonstrations. They contained your recommendations for lifting or relaxing certain restraints. Easing restraints. In some cases keeping it. Its lifting or relaxing restraints to accept your recommendation. I take it by legal coverage we had reference on the procedure that enables intelligence agencies and Law Enforcement to look at the envelopes if the procedure is followed. There is a legal way to do that. Then you recommended also present restrictions on covert coverage should be relaxed on selected targets and foreign intelligence and security

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