OPINION:
In 1975, Sen. Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, gaveled in a new select committee constructed specifically to examine legal and other transgressions engaged in by the Central Intelligence Agency and other elements of the American foreign policy apparatus.
The probe, which lasted about 15 months, eventually widened to include the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice. In its lengthy final report, the committee concluded that the CIA, the FBI and other elements of the federal government had often acted illegally, imprudently and without sufficient authorization from their superiors or from elected officials.
At the time, there was a general sense on the political right that the Church committee was an unnecessary and politically-motivated hit job on law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and had done an enormous disservice to the country by weakening our domestic and international capabilities.
As recently as 10 years ago, it was commonplace to find Republican senators, including those, ironically enough, who served as chairs of the successor committee — the Senate Committee on Intelligence — who viewed Sen. Church’s work with residual anger.
Forget all that. We need a new Church committee.
The pattern of lawbreaking and indifference to political, social, legal and governmental norms among the bureaucracies of the CIA, the FBI and the Department of Justice has now become so obvious and so egregious that Congress must make both a systemic and a granular examination of the activities of those charged with safeguarding the United States and her citizens.
The unfortunately lengthy and troubling list of criminal and pathological behavior on the part of the intelligence and federal law enforcement communities precludes regular order and reliance on any specific committee. Many of the committees who have jurisdiction over these agencies have already failed to conduct or in many cases even initiate meaningful oversight.
Some congressional committee members and staff with jurisdiction are themselves part of the problem. The same old, same old haphazard attempts to conduct this examination through standing committees will inevitably devolve into the same old, same old partisan incompetence and fail.
Citizens require and should demand a special commission or committee be empaneled, preferably led by a serious senator or House member. This is not a moment for the TikTok or Twitter Members. This is a matter of the gravest urgency and will require an equally sober, deliberate and nonpartisan assessment of the depth of the crisis and the changes that need to be made.
Those involved in such an examination should be clear about the stakes. Despite all the nonsense on both sides about insurrection (still, no one charged with that), elections being stolen and votes being suppressed and democracy dying in the darkness, the real and immediate risk to the Republic is that some of those charged with safeguarding it have, in fact, become its enemies.
For instance, we know that some in the FBI and the DOJ wanted to select the president in 2016 and 2020 and fabricated evidence to do so. We know that law enforcement surveilled presidential campaign staff in 2016. We know that Homeland Security surveilled reporters and others. We know that some of those in the intelligence community and federal law enforcement have lied before Congress and elsewhere. We know that former senior members of the intelligence community intentionally occluded efforts prior to the 2020 election to thoroughly examine the contents and provenance of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The Washington Times has recently reported that FBI agents have recently violated the bureau’s own rules almost 750 times while conducting sensitive investigations involving individuals engaged in politics, government, the news media and religious groups.
These are just the things we know.
We also know that the media, which traditionally polices such things, is either incapable or unwilling to do so, in large measure because they are in favor of some of these actions. How have they covered the Hunter Biden laptop, even since The New York Times gave them license to report on that story?
Many in the media seem to be incapable of imagining that federal agents with guns and badges who are willing to commit transgressions to select a president will eventually want to start selecting the news people can see and read.
Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman poet Juvenal wrote: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” — who watches the watchmen themselves? Five hundred years before that, Plato grappled with the same question: How does society protect itself from the tyranny of those who wield the legitimacy of law enforcement like a weapon against the citizenry.
No one likes to think of their own watchmen as part of the problem. But at a certain point, facts become inescapable. The only right answer — and the one we face now — is to be fearless and resolute in examining the conduct of those federal watchmen who need to be watched. If we don’t have a system-wide, open, transparent and meaningful examination of the problem now, when will we?
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is the co-host of “The Unregulated” podcast. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.
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