One Senator's crusade to expose CIA/FBI crimes and cover-ups | Fresh Air

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen tells the story of Senator Frank Church, who exposed crimes and cover-ups of the CIA and the FBI nearly 50 years ago. Risen says the Church hearings, which revealed CIA assassination plots, led to congressional oversight of intelligence agencies. Risen's book is The Last Honest Man.
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[@danielvanness6936]

I’m reading this book right now. It’s very good!

[@lamars2486]

Poor mr church, you see what happened to him, didnt you. And Boggs. Good luck to us in these USA 😊

[@AnneKass]

Having read, and re-read this book, I, who was, I thought, a sentient being, in 1975, now recognize I wasn't even close, because the media in the mid-1970s failed us then, and before then, and continue to fail us. This interview, for example, spends way too much time on salacious bits--the Mafia, and the womanizing, etc., and not nearly enough emphasizing that Frank Church, in his early 20s, after a few years as a military "intelligence analyst" already suspected that WWII was transforming the USA democratic republic into a military empire. He thought it was a work in progress and not a fait accompli, and maybe it could still have been avoided, but the men in the USA government (and almost all were men) were enchanted by and addicted to being an empire, aka wealth and power. Church didn't seem to recognize that the transformation was already well advanced. He was sounding the alarm, but it seems no-one, including me, was listening. Today, it is obvious that the revelations and warnings of the Church Committee have all become our reality. The USA is a full-blown military empire which still claims to be a democracy and that elections and informed citizenry, are still American values, but that's all noise. I honor and respect Frank Church and his efforts to ward off a USA military empire, but I think those efforts failed. Frank Church didn't yet have a clue about climate change and the catastrophes that this will bring to the planet, and to the living beings on it, all hastened because the USA Empire has metastasized. Prior empires have all failed but generally have taken a long time to do so. The USSR crumbled relatively quickly. (I recall hearing that Noam Chomsky said "One evil empire down/one evil empire to go.) Climate change will surely accelerate the demise of the USA empire, and the consequences may be far more drastic than "crumbling." I'm 79 years old and I have taken some solace imagining that I wouldn't live to experience the fall. Now I'm not so sure. We have two ancient men seeking to be "leader of the free world" neither of whom seems to have a clue what finesse or policy or compromise or respect for humankind/living beings looks like, never mind how to lead/encourage people to come together to secure it.. I, for one, don't think either of them understands or is in charge, never mind control, of what happens next. As for who is, now that's an investigation and report that calls for attention, immediate attention.

[@TighelanderII]

The public didn't like the CIA back then, so the Iranian Revolution could have been diffused with this, preventing Reagan handing the country over to Conservatives.

[@JD-ev3po]

Be careful not to be tribal. Bush and Chaney and Obama and Biden weaponized the DOJ. Trump did not. It's a human decision and ideology--not a political party.