VERO BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Former New York Democratic Rep. Otis Pike, who led a mid-1970s House investigation into CIA activities, has died in Florida, his daughter said.
Pike died Monday at a Vero Beach hospice after a long illness, said his daughter, Lois Pike Eyre. He was 92.
Pike served 18 years in Congress before deciding to retire in 1978.
In 1975 and 1976, he chaired the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which investigated questionable CIA activities. The agency considered the inquiries by the Pike Committee and its counterpart in the Senate as a dramatic shift in Congress and the first significant House investigation of the U.S. intelligence community since the CIA’s creation in 1947.
Pike also served as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee and the Budget Committee.
After he retired from Congress, Pike wrote a syndicated column for Newhouse Newspapers for 20 years. In his later years, his split his time between homes in Vero Beach and Virginia, his family said.
Pike was born Aug. 31, 1921, in Riverhead, N.Y.. He served in the Marines as a pilot in the Pacific during World War II, and then worked as a lawyer in his hometown.
He is survived by his second wife and two children. Plans for a funeral service were pending.
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