Church Committee Report : Revelations from the Bombshell 1970s Investigation into the National Security State

After fifty years, this shocking report―released in a single, readable volume for the first time―is still the most accurate account of US government spying on its own citizens.

Fifty years ago, a government investigation led by US senator Frank Church uncovered some of the darkest state secrets of the twentieth century. The Church Committee confirmed the nation’s worst fears about the unchecked power of its intelligence agencies: at the FBI, surveillance campaigns against civil rights leaders and clandestine attempts to disrupt antiwar protests; at the CIA, assassination plots against foreign heads of state, experiments with toxic substances and illegal drugs, and covert partnerships with the Mafia. The Church Committee’s findings were so explosive that key members found themselves on the watch lists of the very government agencies they were investigating. Three witnesses who cooperated with the inquiry were murdered.

Amid the creep of digital surveillance and the upheavals of social protest, this accessible volume, containing the most harrowing revelations of the Church Committee investigation, sheds valuable light on some of today’s most urgent concerns.

Matthew Guariglia is a historian and senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He is the author of Police and the Empire City: Race and the Origins of Modern Policing in New York. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Brian Hochman is the Hubert J. Cloke Director of American Studies at Georgetown University and author of The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States. He lives in Washington, DC.