One of the first moves House Republicans made after assuming the chamber’s majority was to create – in a party-line vote of 221-211 – the “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.” But rather than use that unwieldy moniker, GOP leaders appropriated the name of an iconic investigative committee from a bygone era.
In 1975, in an 82-4 vote, the Senate created the Church committee, which was chaired by Idaho Democratic Sen. Frank Church, to investigate the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency. (Its official title was the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.) Over 15 months and more than 100 full committee meetings, Church’s panel examined decades of egregious abuses by the intelligence agencies, from spying on American citizens including Martin Luther King Jr. to plotting to assassinate foreign leaders and topple their governments. These were brought to light as Americans were recovering from the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate, which seriously damaged their faith in government institutions – a climate not unlike ours today.
The Church committee’s work had strong bipartisan support and its historic findings led to real reforms. This is why Republicans’ move to call their panel a “new Church committee” has rankled people who worked with Church 48 years ago as well as scholars who see few similarities between past and present.
In this episode of History As It Happens, historian Sam Martin, the Frank and Bethine Church endowed chair of public affairs at Boise State University in Idaho, said she suspects the new panel, led by pro-Trump Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, will devolve into partisan warfare designed to exact revenge on the former president’s opponents, rather than expose actual wrongdoing.
“What Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy are engaged in right now is an effort to interpret the past and Jan. 6 unfaithfully,” said Ms. Martin, referring to the possibility that Mr. Jordan may investigate the Jan. 6 committee. That panel referred Mr. Jordan to the House Ethics Committee for his involvement in former President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Listen to Ms. Martin discuss the importance of the Church committee’s work to restore faith in government, and whether today’s House GOP might accomplish the same, by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
