Pike Committee
RUBBER STAMP OF WARREN REPORT.
Looking for a Rogue
Elephant
The Pike Committee
Investigations and the CIA
Gerald K. Haines
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A
storm broke over the CIA on 22 December 1974, when
In
response, President Ford established a blue-ribbon panel, the Rockefeller
Commission, to investigate CIA activities in the
These
Congressional investigations eventually delved into all aspects of the CIA and
the IC. For the first time in the Agency's history, CIA officials faced hostile
Congressional committees bent on the exposure of abuses by intelligence agencies
and on major reforms. In the Congress, there was no longer a consensus to
support intelligence activities blindly. The old Congressional seniority system
and its leadership was giving way. With the investigations, the CIA also became
a focal point in the ongoing battle between the Congress and the executive
branch over foreign policy issues and the "imperial presidency."
The
investigations of the Pike Committee, headed by Democratic Representative Otis
Pike of New York, paralleled those of the Church Committee, led by Idaho Senator
Frank Church, also a Democrat. While the Church Committee centered its attention
on the more sensational charges of illegal activities by the CIA and other
components of the IC, the Pike Committee set about examining the CIA's
effectiveness and its costs to taxpayers. Unfortunately, Representative Pike,
the committee, and its staff never developed a cooperative working relationship
with the Agency or the Ford administration.
The
committee soon was at odds with the CIA and the White House over questions of
access to documents and information and the declassification of materials.
Relations between the Agency and the Pike Committee became confrontational. CIA
officials came to detest the committee and its efforts at investigation. Many
observers maintained moreover, that Representative Pike was seeking to use the
committee hearings to enhance his senatorial ambitions, and the committee staff,
almost entirely young and anti-establishment, clashed with Agency and White
House officials.
The Nedzi Committee
Following
the lead of the Ford administration with its Rockefeller Commission
investigation and the
The
committee consisted of seven Democrats and three Republicans. Because it was a
select committee, the House leadership appointed the members. Unlike the Senate
Committee, which was carefully balanced politically, Speaker of the House Carl
Albert and Majority Leader Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr., chose to give the committee a
liberal Democratic majority. 3 All Democratic
members of the Nedzi Committee had strong negative feelings about the IC.
Democratic Congressman Ron Dellums, for example, stated even before the creation
of the committee that "I think this committee ought to come down hard and
clear on the side of stopping any intelligence agency in this country from
utilizing, corrupting, and prostituting the media, the church, and our
educational system." 4
Albert
and O'Neill selected Nedzi as committee chairman. Nedzi, a 14-year veteran of
the House, also had strong liberal credentials. He had opposed the Vietnam war,
the development of the B-1 bomber, and the antiballistic missile system. Since
1971, he had served as chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on
Intelligence. As chairman, Nedzi had conducted a thorough investigation into the
CIA's role in Watergate. 5
CIA
officials found Nedzi to be a solid choice, but other Democrats in the House and
on the committee had major reservations. Harrington especially felt Nedzi had
been "co-opted" by his service as chairman of the subcommittee on
intelligence. He asked, "How could he investigate himself?"
6
The
party ratio on the committee upset Rhodes and the other Republicans.
Nevertheless,
Nedzi
tried to set an agenda for the committee's investigations. He believed that the
committee should focus on the Agency's "family jewels"-- the list of
abuses and possible illegal activities the Agency itself compiled in the early
1970s. On 5 June 1975, however, before the committee could meet to discuss its
program, The New York Times published details of the "family
jewels" and revealed that Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William
Colby had briefed Nedzi about them in 1973, when Nedzi was chairman of the Armed
Services Subcommittee on Intelligence. 9 His
fellow Democrats, led by Harrington, revolted. Nedzi resigned as chairman of the
committee on 12 June 1975.
Harrington
suspected that Nedzi's resignation was simply part of a plot to abolish the
Select Committee and prevent a House investigation of the IC and the CIA.
10 Accordingly, on 13 June, with a rump caucus chaired by Representative
James Stanton, the Democrats tried to hold a hearing on intelligence with Colby
as the first witness. At Nedzi's urging, however, the Republicans refused to
attend, thus preventing an official meeting. The committee investigation then
ground to a halt. 11
The
circus-like atmosphere continued on 16 June, when the House rejected Nedzi's
resignation by a vote of 290 to 64. But Nedzi refused to continue as chairman.
On 17 July, the House abolished Nedzi's Select Committee and voted to establish
a new Select Committee with Representative Pike as chairman.
12
The Pike Committee
The
new committee did not differ greatly from the old one. Enlarged to 13 members,
the committee, led by Democrats, continued to provide a solid liberal Democratic
majority even after it dropped Nedzi and Harrington from membership. Pike also
retained Searle Field as chief of staff from the Nedzi Committee and brought in
Aaron Donner from New York as his chief counsel. Despite the new start, the
committee remained badly divided on ideological grounds. The majority was still
hostile toward the CIA and the White House. 13
Pike, like Nedzi, would have no mandate to develop an effective investigation,
14 the expiration date for which was 31 January 1976.
Unlike
the Church Committee, which had carefully balanced younger staff with Hill
professionals and ex-IC members, the Pike Committee had a predominantly young
staff with little experience either on the Hill or in the Intelligence
Community. 15 This would cause major problems in
dealing with the Agency and the White House.
The CIA Reaction
Just
as he had done with the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, DCI
Colby promised his full cooperation to the Pike Committee. Colby, accompanied by
Special Counsel Mitchell Rogovin and Enno H. Knoche, Assistant to the Director,
met with Pike and Congressman McClory, the ranking Republican on the committee,
on 24 July 1975. At the meeting, Colby expressed his continuing belief that the
committee would find that the main thrust of US intelligence was "good,
solid, and trustworthy."
Pike
responded that he had no intention of destroying US intelligence. What he
wanted, he told Colby, was to build public and Congressional understanding and
support for intelligence by "exposing" as much as possible of its
nature without doing harm to proper intelligence activities. Pike related to
Colby that he knew the investigation would cause "occasional conflict
between us, but that a constructive approach by both sides should resolve
it." Privately, Pike indicated that he believed the Agency was a
"rogue elephant" out of control, as Senator Church had charged
publicly. It needed to be restrained and major reporting reforms initiated.
Colby,
unaware of Pike's private views, then sought an agreement with Pike and McClory
on procedural matters much like the Agency had negotiated with the Church
Committee. Colby outlined his responsibility for protecting sources and methods
and the complexity posed in meeting "far-flung requests for all documents
and files" relating to a given topic.
Pike
would have none of Colby's reasoning. He assured the DCI that the committee had
its own security standards. He also refused to allow the CIA or the executive
branch to stipulate the terms under which the committee would receive or review
classified information. Pike insisted, moreover, that the committee had the
authority to declassify intelligence documents unilaterally.
16 He appeared bent on asserting what he saw as the Constitutional
prerogatives of the legislative branch over the executive branch, and the CIA
was caught in the middle.
Given
Pike's position, the committee's relationship with the Agency and the White
House quickly deteriorated. It soon became open warfare.
Confrontation
would be the key to CIA and White House relationships with the Pike Committee
and its staff. Early on, Republican Representative James Johnson set the tone
for the relationship when he told Seymour Bolten, chief of the CIA Review Staff,
"You, the CIA, are the enemy." Colby came to consider Pike a
"jackass" and his staff "a ragtag, immature and publicity-seeking
group." 17 Even Colby's rather reserved
counsel, Mitch Rogovin, saw Pike as "a real prickly guy...to deal
with." Rogovin believed Pike was not really wrong in his position. "He
just made it so goddamn difficult. You also had to deal with Pike's political
ambitions." 18
The
CIA Review Staff, which worked closely with both the Church Committee and Pike
Committee staffs, never developed the same cooperative relationship with the
Pike Committee staffers that it did with the Church Committee. The Review Staff
pictured the Pike staffers as "flower children, very young and
irresponsible and naïve."
According
to CIA officer Richard Lehman, the Pike Committee staffers were "absolutely
convinced that they were dealing with the devil incarnate." For Lehman, the
Pike staff "came in loaded for bear." Donald Gregg, the CIA officer
responsible for coordinating Agency responses to the Pike Committee, remembered,
"The months I spent with the Pike Committee made my tour in Vietnam seem
like a picnic. I would vastly prefer to fight the Viet Cong than deal with a
polemical investigation by a Congressional committee, which is what the Pike
Committee [investigation] was." An underlying problem was the large
cultural gap between officers trained in the early years of the Cold War and the
young staffers of the anti-Vietnam and civil rights movements of the late 1960s
and early 1970s.
As for
the White House, it viewed Pike as "unscrupulous and roguish." Henry
Kissinger, while appearing to cooperate with the committee, worked hard to
undermine its investigations and to stonewall the release of documents to it.
19 Relations between the White House and the Pike Committee became worse
as the investigations progressed. William Hyland, an assistant to Kissinger,
found Pike "impossible."
Pike
and the committee members were just as frustrated. On 4 August 1975, Pike aired
his frustration in a committee hearing. "What we have found thus far is a
great deal of the language of cooperation and a great deal of the activity of
noncooperation," he announced. 20 Other
committee members felt that trying to get information from the Agency or the
White House was like "pulling teeth." 21
By
September, the relationship was even worse. The CIA Review Staff found the Pike
Committee requests for documents "silly" and the deadlines impossible
to meet. For example, the committee on 22 September 1975 issued a request for
"any and all documents" relating to a series of covert operations. At
the bottom of the request it added it would like them "today, if
possible."
The
final draft report of the Pike Committee reflected its sense of frustration with
the Agency and the executive branch. Devoting an entire section of the report to
describing its experience, the committee characterized Agency and White House
cooperation as "virtually nonexistent." The report asserted that the
executive branch practiced "footdragging, stonewalling, and deception"
in response to committee requests for information. It told the committee only
what it wanted the committee to know. It restricted the dissemination of the
information and ducked penetrating questions. 22
The
Agency did not allow the draft Pike Report to go unchallenged. CIA officials
believed that, to a great extent, the committee's troubles with regard to access
were of its own making. Accountability was a two-way street and the committee
staff was "self-righteous and blind," according to Robert Chin,
Associate Legislative Counsel. Searle Field did admit later that the committee
had far more trouble with the State Department, the White House, and the Defense
Department than it did with the Agency with regard to access to sensitive
documents.
Investigation of Intelligence Budget
Pike
himself set the agenda for the House investigations. Unlike the Church Committee
and the Rockefeller Commission, which allowed their agendas to be determined by
the executive branch, Pike refused to get caught up in the sensationalism of the
press charges of domestic abuses. Initially convinced that the IC was out of
control, Pike focused his committee's investigations on the cost of US
intelligence, its effectiveness, and who controlled it. In his first meeting
with Colby on 24 July 1975, Pike indicated his committee would begin its
investigation by concentrating on intelligence budgets. He told Colby he
personally believed that knowledge of intelligence expenditures should be open
and widespread.
Illustrative
of just how quickly the relationship between the Agency and the Pike Committee
turned sour was a sarcastic letter Pike addressed to Colby on 28 July 1975, only
four days after their first meeting. In the letter, Pike informed the DCI that
the committee would be investigating the IC's budget. Pike began the letter by
stating, "First of all, it's a delight to receive two letters from you not
stamped 'Secret' on every page." Pike then criticized Colby's
letters--which laid out the basic legislation establishing the National Security
Council, the CIA, and the DCI and detailed the compartmentation issue in
developing the atomic bomb and the U-2--as not "particularly pertinent to
the present issue."
Pike
made it clear he was seeking information on the IC's budget. He wrote that he
was not interested in history, sources and methods, or the names of agents.
"I am seeking to obtain information on how much of the taxpayers' dollars
you spend each year and the basic purposes for which it is spent," he wrote
Colby. He justified his focus on the budget by citing Article I, Section 9 of
the Constitution: "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in
consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account
of the receipts and expenditures of public money be published from time to
time." He then continued:
I
would assume that a reasonable place to look for that statement of account would
be in the Budget of the United States Government and while it may be in there, I
can't find it. I hope that Mr. Lynn [James Lynn, Director of the Office of
Management and Budget] may be able to help me. The Index of the Budget for
fiscal year 1976 under the "C's" moves from Center for Disease Control
to Chamizal Settlement and to a little old country lawyer, it would seem to me
that between those two might have been an appropriate place to find the CIA but
it is not there. It's possibly in there somewhere but I submit that it is not
there in the manner which the founding fathers intended and the Constitution
requires.
Pike
seemed to believe that, "by following the dollars," the committee
could "locate activities and priorities of our intelligence services."
Accordingly, on 31 July 1975, the Pike Committee held its first hearing on the
CIA budget. Elmer B. Staats, the Comptroller General of the General Accounting
Office (GAO), was the first witness. Staats testified that the GAO had no idea
how much money the CIA spent or whether its management of that money was
effective or wasteful because his agency had no access to CIA budgetary
information. 23
When
Colby appeared before the committee on 4 August, he refused to testify publicly
on the intelligence budget. The next day, however, he appeared in executive
session and outlined the expenditures of the Agency in some detail, stressing
that the largest portion of the budget was justifiably devoted to the Soviet
Union and to China, the primary US intelligence targets. Colby argued that
revealing even the total of the CIA budget would do substantial harm to the US
intelligence effort. According to Colby, it would enable foreign intelligence
services to improve considerably their estimates of US capabilities. Turning the
argument around, Colby reasoned that the US Government would benefit
considerably from access to this same information concerning the Soviet
intelligence effort. He then stated, "To the best of my knowledge, no other
intelligence service in the world publicizes its intelligence budget."
Colby
further argued that public knowledge of CIA budget totals would not
significantly increase the public's or Congress's ability to make judgments
about CIA programs because, without greater detail and understanding of the
programs themselves, no significant conclusions could be drawn. Rogovin and
other CIA officials evidently believed Colby had presented a strong case before
the committee for maintaining secrecy in the budgetary process. They thought he
had effectively deflected all major criticisms.
The
CIA assessment was very different from the Pike Committee's. The Pike group's
final report concluded that the foreign intelligence budget was three or four
times larger than Congress had been told; that money appropriated for the IC was
hidden throughout the entire Federal budget; that the total amount of funds
expended on intelligence was extremely difficult to determine; and that
Congressional and executive scrutiny of the budget ranged between "cursory
and nonexistent." The report described the GAO as the auditing arm of
Congress, but, when it came to the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA,
"it was no arm at all."
The
GAO was, the report found, prevented by security constraints from looking
carefully into intelligence budgets. The end result, according to the report,
was insufficient executive and legislative oversight. The committee also saw a
"too cozy, almost inbred" relationship between the Office of
Management and Budget officials and the intelligence budget makers.
24
Taking
on the issue of secrecy, the report argued that "taxpayers and most of
Congress did not know and cannot find out how much they spend on spy
activities." The committee saw this as being in direct conflict with the
Constitution, which required a regular and public accounting for all funds spent
by the Federal Government. 25 The document then
addressed Colby's argument that the Soviets would benefit enormously from
disclosure. The report claimed that the Soviets probably already had a detailed
account of US intelligence spending, far more than just the budget total. It
concluded that "in all likelihood, the only people who care to know and do
not know these costs are the American taxpayers."
26
In
addition, the report found that the DCI, who was nominally in charge of the
entire Community budget, controlled only 15 percent of the total intelligence
budget. The Secretary of Defense had much greater power and control over a
greater portion of the intelligence budget than the DCI. 27
When
CIA officials reviewed the draft report, they took exception to the document as
a distorted view of the budgetary process. Arguing against the disclosure of a
budget figure for the IC, Agency officials felt that any disclosure
"permits the camel to put his nose under the tent." The general
feeling among Agency officials was that the release would grossly misrepresent
to the US public and to the world what was actually spent on intelligence by the
United States. They reasoned that, if such gross estimates led to public
pressures for reducing intelligence expenditures, it could do irreparable damage
to real intelligence functions and their ability to support US foreign and
defense policies. They also contended that if the report was released as is, it
would give the public the erroneous impression that the CIA did not have
thorough budget reviews. The official Agency position recommended deleting
almost all the budget references from the report.
But
the Agency's comments and protests had little impact on the final report. As
drafted, it recommended that all intelligence-related items be included as
intelligence expenditures in the President's budget, and that the total sum
budgeted for each agency involved in intelligence be disclosed. If such an item
was a portion of the budget of another agency or department, it should be
identified separately. The report also recommended that the Congress draft
appropriate legislation to prohibit any significant transfer of funds or
significant expenditures of reserve or contingency funds in connection with
intelligence activities without specific approval of the Congressional
intelligence committees. In addition, the committee recommended that the GAO be
empowered to conduct a full and complete management as well as financial audit
of all intelligence agencies. 28 These clearly
were not wild and crazy recommendations.
Evaluating US Intelligence Performance
The
budget issue was only one major question raised by the Pike Committee. The
committee also wanted to know just how effective the CIA and US intelligence had
been over the past 10 years. This investigation also provoked a major
confrontation between the Agency and the White House on the one hand and the
Pike Committee on the other. On 9 September 1975, after submitting informal
requests for information, the Pike Committee formally requested "all CIA
estimates, current intelligence reports and summaries, situation reports, and
other pertinent documents" that related to the IC's ability to predict
"the 1973 Mideast war; the 1974 Cyprus crisis; the 1974 coup in Portugal;
the 1974 nuclear explosion by India; the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam; the 1972
declarations of martial law in the Philippines and Korea; and the 1968 Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia." The committee, of course, wanted all of this
by the next morning. The request outraged Agency officials.
House
Select Committee hearings on the 1973 Middle East War began on 11 September.
They almost immediately degenerated into open warfare with the executive branch.
Pike, a firm believer that the classification system was strictly that of the
executive branch and that his committee had the right to unilaterally declassify
and release information, released part of a CIA summary of the situation in the
Middle East prepared on 6 October 1973 that had seriously misjudged Egyptian and
other Arab intentions. The CIA and the White House both objected, maintaining
that the release compromised sources and national security. As released, the
report read:
The
(deleted) large-scale mobilization exercise may be an effort to soothe internal
problems as much as to improve military capabilities. Mobilization of some
personnel, increased readiness of isolated units, and greater communications
security are all assessed as part of the exercise routine.... There are still no
military or political indicators of Egyptian intentions or preparation to resume
hostilities with Israel. 29
According
to Agency officials and the White House, the release of the four words "and
greater communications security" meant that the United States had the
capability to monitor Egyptian communications systems. But the Agency and the
White House were on shaky ground. Kissinger himself had leaked the same
information to Marvin and Bernard Kalb for their book on Kissinger. Discussing
the Yom Kippur war, the Kalb brothers wrote:
Finally,
from a secret US base in southern Iran, the National Security Agency, which
specializes in electronic intelligence, picked up signals indicating that the
Egyptians had set up a vastly more complicated field communications network than
mere "maneuvers" warranted. 30
To add
fuel to the fire, on 12 September 1975, Pike subpoenaed records relating to the
Tet offensive in Vietnam in 1968. His action touched off a major (albeit
short-lived) war between the Pike Committee and the White House. The CIA played
a secondary role in this knockdown Constitutional struggle. On the same day,
President Ford ordered that the Pike Committee be cut off from all access to
classified documents and forbade administration officials from testifying before
the committee.
Despite
this action, each of the principals--the White House, the CIA, and the House of
Representatives--sought a political compromise that would avoid a court test.
The Pike Committee itself proposed to resolve the issue by giving the executive
branch a 24-hour notice before release of information in order to provide for
consultation.
At a
joint meeting at the White House on 26 September, Ford agreed to lift his order
prohibiting the further release of classified materials to the Pike Committee.
In return, Pike and McClory agreed on having the President be the ultimate judge
in any future disputes over the public release of classified materials.
31
The
near war over the declassification issue detracted from the committee's work of
evaluating the overall performance of the IC. In general, however, the committee
was critical of the performance of US intelligence in predicting the 1973
Mideast war; the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam; the 1974 coup in Cyprus; the
1974 coup in Portugal; the 1974 testing of a nuclear device by India; and the
1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. 32
For
example, using the Agency's own postmortems on the Yom Kippur war, the committee
found that the "principal conclusions concerning the commencement of
hostilities...were--quite simply, obviously, and starkly--wrong."
33 In earlier testimony before the committee, Colby admitted that,
"We did not cover ourselves with glory. We predicted the day before the war
broke out that it was not going to break out." 34
Despite
Colby's forthright assessment, the Agency reacted defensively to the draft
report. Disregarding their own postmortems, which basically supported the
committee's findings, Agency officials fought to have most of the section on the
Mideast war deleted. They argued that the section was unbalanced in its
treatment of the war and that the parts which spoke of the Arab fighting units
as inferior would "confirm Arab belief that the US view of them was
degrading, thereby exacerbating relations." They also worried that the
report provided too much detail on the US capability to read Soviet traffic to
Egypt. Unlike the give-and-take brokering that characterized CIA's relations
with the Church Committee, positions on both sides of the Pike Committee/Agency
relationship tended to be uncompromising. Pike Committee staffers did remove
names and sources, but they left in most of what the Agency objected to. They
contended that to comply with the Agency recommendations would leave nothing.
The Committee Reviews Covert Actions
The
Agency, with close White House cooperation and support, continued its assault on
the Pike Committee investigations and findings when the committee announced it
would investigate 10 years of covert action in general, as well as specific CIA
actions with regard to the 1972 Italian elections, US covert aid to the Kurds in
Iraq from 1972 to 1975, and US covert activities in Angola. Under orders from
the White House, CIA officials refused to testify in open session before the
committee on these operations, declaring that such hearings would only benefit
foreign intelligence services. 35
The
committee instead heard from Congressman Michael Harrington and Harvard law
professor Roger Fisher, both of whom called for the outlawing of all covert
action; former National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, who opposed covert
action in peacetime; and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who claimed that the
CIA was indeed "a rogue elephant" and who suggested that the only
remedy was to impose strict executive and legislative oversight and drastically
cut the intelligence budget as the ways to curb covert actions.
36
The
committee followed these hearings with a detailed examination of the role of the
National Security Council and the "40 Committee", the major
decisionmaking bodies when it came to covert action approval. The key question
for the committee was whether the CIA was a "rogue elephant" or under
strict control of the President and the executive branch?
37
The
committee found that covert actions "were irregularly approved, sloppily
implemented, and, at times, had been forced on a reluctant CIA by the President
and his national security advisers." Except for assassination attempts,
however, it did not recommend abolition of all covert action; it merely called
for tighter controls.
With
tighter controls in mind, the committee recommended that the DCI notify it in
writing with a detailed explanation of the nature, extent, purpose, and cost of
all covert operations within 48 hours of initial implementation. It also
proposed that the President certify in writing that such a covert action
operation was required to protect the national security of the United States.
38
The
committee's findings in this area were generally unexpected by CIA officers.
These findings made clear the committee believed that the CIA was not out of
control and that the Agency did not conduct operations without approval from
higher authority. Pike himself stated publicly that "the CIA does not go
galloping off conducting operations by itself.... The major things which are
done are not done unilaterally by the CIA without approval from higher up the
line." 39
The
committee's final report also made it clear that the committee did not believe
the CIA was out of control. It stated, "All evidence in hand suggests that
the CIA, far from being out of control, has been utterly responsive to the
instructions of the President and the Assistant to the President for National
Security Affairs." 40 Even Pike, who
started out convinced that the CIA and the IC were indeed out of control,
concluded:
I
wound up the hearings with a higher regard for the CIA than when I started. We
did find evidence, upon evidence, upon evidence where the CIA said: "No,
don't do it." The State Department or the White House said, "We're
going to do it." The CIA was much more professional and had a far deeper
reading on the down-the-road implications of some immediately popular act than
the executive branch or administration officials. One thing I really disagreed
with [Senator Frank] Church on was his characterization of the CIA as a
"rogue elephant." The CIA never did anything the White House didn't
want. Sometimes they didn't want to do what they did. 41
The Final Report
Determined
to finish his work by 31 January 1976, Pike pushed his committee for a final
report. Searle Field at first hired Stanley Bach, a political scientist with
some Hill experience, to write a draft report. Working primarily from the
transcripts of the committee's hearings, Bach produced a rather balanced report
not uncritical of the IC. The report called for the establishment of a joint
intelligence oversight committee using the Joint Atomic Energy Committee as a
model. 42
Pike
rejected the draft and assigned the responsibility for producing a satisfactory
final report to Field and Aaron Donner. By early January, they had a draft.
On 19
January, Field turned over a copy of the 338-page report for Agency review. He
wanted it back by the close of business on 20 January. Rogovin responded with a
scalding attack on the report. He criticized the extreme time constraints placed
on the Agency in making its response and pictured the report as an
"unrelenting indictment couched in biased, pejorative and factually
erroneous terms." For Rogovin and most of the Agency, the report focused
almost exclusively on negative matters and totally lacked balance. It gave the
American public a distorted view of US intelligence, thereby "severely
limiting its impact, credibility, and the important work of your
committee." 43
Despite
Rogovin's protest, on 23 January 1976 the committee voted 9 to 7 along party
lines to release its report with no substantial changes. The Republicans on the
committee, strongly supported by the Agency and the White House, now led the
fight to suppress the report.
At the
same time, Colby, fearing that the report would be released, called a press
conference to denounce the committee and called the committee report
"totally biased and a disservice to our nation." Colby claimed the
report gave a thoroughly wrong impression of American intelligence.
44
Unofficially
supported by the Agency and the White House, McClory and the other Republicans
took the fight to suppress the report to the House floor on 26 January 1976.
McClory argued that the release of the report would endanger the national
security of the United States. 45 On the same
day, The New York Times printed large sections of the draft report.
46
On 29
January 1976, the House voted 246 to 124 to direct the Pike Committee not to
release its report until it "has been certified by the President as not
containing information which would adversely affect the intelligence activities
of the CIA." 47 Democratic Representative
Wayne Hays seemed to reflect the basic feelings of the majority in the House
when he commented just before the vote:
I
will probably vote not to release it, because I do not know what is in it. On
the other hand, let me say it has been leaked page by page, sentence by
sentence, paragraph by paragraph to The New York Times, but I suspect, and I do
not know and this is what disturbs me, that when this report comes out it is
going to be the biggest non-event since Brigitte Bardot, after 40 years and four
husbands and numerous lovers, held a press conference to announce that she was
no longer a virgin. 48
Pike
was bitter over the vote. He announced to the House, "The House just voted
not to release a document it had not read. Our committee voted to release a
document it had read." 49 Pike was so upset
that he threatened not to file a report at all with the House because "a
report on the CIA in which the CIA would do the final rewrite would be a
lie." 50 Later, Pike reflected that
"They, the White House, wanted to precensor our final report. This was
unacceptable." 51
In an
attempt to pacify Pike, McClory on 3 February made a motion in committee
"that Speaker Carl Albert be asked to submit the final report to President
Ford so that it might be sanitized and released." The committee rejected
this last effort at compromise by a vote of 7 to 4. 52
Journalist Daniel Schorr then gave a copy of the entire Pike Report to The
Village Voice, which published it in full on 16 February 1976 under the
title "The Report on the CIA that President Ford Doesn't Want You to
Read." 53 When Schorr admitted that he
leaked the report to The Village Voice, the House voted to have its
Committee on Standards of Official Conduct investigate the leak. After extensive
inquiry, it failed to find out who leaked the report. So ended the House
investigation of the IC. 54
The Committee Recommendations
The
solid recommendations the Pike Committee made for improving Congressional and
executive oversight of the IC and for strengthening the DCI's command and
control authorities were overlooked in the commotion surrounding the leaking of
the committee's report to the press. In addition to its recommendations for
prohibiting assassinations, opening the IC budget, allowing GAO audits of the
CIA, and introducing stricter oversight of covert actions, the committee's
number-one recommendation, like the Church Committee's, was the establishment of
a Standing Committee on Intelligence. Unlike its Senate counterpart, the House
committee would have jurisdiction over all legislation and oversight functions
relating to all US agencies and departments engaged in foreign or domestic
intelligence. It would have exclusive jurisdiction over budget authorization for
all intelligence activities and for all covert actions.
The
Pike Committee also proposed to vest this committee with subpoena power and the
right to release any information or documents in its possession or control.
Coupled with this last recommendation was an additional section that recommended
criminal sanctions for the unauthorized disclosure of information tending to
identify any US intelligence officer. 55
All
these reform recommendations were attempts to improve the organization,
performance, and control of the IC without adversely affecting US intelligence
capabilities. Yet, in the turmoil surrounding the controversy over whether to
release the report, the recommendations were ignored, forgotten, or simply
lumped in with the report as "outrageous and missing all the points."
Not until July 1977 did the House vote to create a permanent House intelligence
committee. Later, a reflective Pike saw the leaks and fights over disclosure as
"distracting from the committee findings." 56
Assessment
Despite
its failures, the Pike Committee inquiry was a new and dramatic break with the
past. It was the first significant House investigation of the IC since the
creation of the CIA in 1947.
In the
final analysis, both the CIA and the committee were caught up in the greater
power struggle between the legislative and executive branches in which the
Congress in the late 1970s tried to regain control over US intelligence
activities and foreign policy. The investigations were part of this overall
struggle. And the inquiry foreshadowed, although it was not clear at the time,
that Congress would become much more of a consumer of the intelligence product.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gerald K. Haines
is the Agency Historian at CIA. He also heads CIA's History Staff.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1.
Seymour Hersh, "Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against
Anti-War forces," The New York Times, 22 December 1974, p. 1.
2.
Frank J. Smist, Jr., Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence
Community, 1947-1989 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), p. 134.
3.
Congressional Quarterly, 19 February 1975, p. 240. See "House
Approves Investigation of CIA, FBI." The Democratic members were Robert
Giaimo, Don Edwards, James V. Stanton, Michael Harrington, Ronald Dellums, and
Morgan Murphy.
4.
Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
161. Dellums is quoted in House Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S.
Intelligence Agencies and Activities: Committee Proceedings, 2 (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1976): 2163.
5.
Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, pp.
146-150.
6.
Ibid., p. 151.
7.
Rhodes appointed Robert McClory, David Treen, and Robert Kasten to the
committee. Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community,
pp. 137-145.
8.
Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
161.
9.
See The New York Times, 5 June 1975, p. 1. The CIA "family
jewels" was a 663-page internal report compiled on possible Agency illegal
activities. It was ordered by DCI James Schlesinger following the Watergate
revelations in 1973. See also Smist, Congress Oversees the United States
Intelligence Community pp. 152-153.
10.
See "House Votes New Intelligence Committee," 18 July 1975,
Congressional Quarterly, p. 230. See also John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise
and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 587.
11.
Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, pp.139
and 161-165. New Democratic members included Les Aspin, Dale Milford, Philip
Hays, and William Lehman. All the original Republicans remained on the new
committee, and they added James Johnson.
12.
Pike, a World War II Marine Corps captain, was a close friend of Nedzi.
Both had served in the House for seven terms and both had been on the House
Armed Services Committee. Pike had also conducted the House investigation of the
North Korean seizure of the Pueblo in 1968. In 1975, Pike expressed interest in
running for the Senate in 1976.
13.
See Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
176.
14.
Ibid., pp. 176, 208, and 290.
15.Ibid.,
p. 290.
16.
Ibid., p. 290.
17.
See William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 431-432.
18.
Rogovin, telephone interview with author.
19.
See Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community,
pp. 157 and 189.
20.
See House Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies
and Activities: Intelligence Costs, (Washington, DC, GPO, 1975), p. 169.
21.
See Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
178.
22.
See CIA, The Pike Report, (Nottingham, England: Spokesman Books, 1977),
pp. 26-94.
23.
See House Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies
and Activities: Intelligence Costs, (Washington, DC; GPO, 1975), p. 126.
24.
Ibid., pp. 110-113.
25.
Ibid., pp. 110-113.
26.
Ibid., pp. 113-116.
27.
Ibid., pp. 115-120. The report also noted that the military intelligence
budget did not include expenditures for tactical military intelligence, and that
this greatly distorted the intelligence budgets of the Services. See also House
Select Committee on Intelligence, Intelligence Costs, pp. 109-224.
28.
See The Pike Report, pp. 259-260 and House Select Committee on
Intelligence, Intelligence Costs, pp. 109-224.
29.
See Daniel Schorr, Clearing the Air (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), p.
188 and Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
185.
30.
See Marvin and Bernard Kalb, Kissinger (Boston: Little Brown, 1974), p.
454 and Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
186.
31.
See Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
186. Pike later maintained that this agreement did not extend to the committee's
final report.
32.
For the Pike Committee evaluations of US intelligence relating to the
Mideast war, see the Pike Report, pp. 141-148; for the Tet offensive, see
pp.130-138; on Portugal, pp. 149-154; on India, pp. 155-157; on Cyprus, pp.
158-168; and on Czechoslovakia pp. 139-140.
33.
The Pike Report, p. 141.
34.
See Colby, statement before the committee, 4 August 1975, House Select
Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies and Activities: Risks and
Control, pp. 1771-1773.
35.
See Select Committee on Intelligence, Risks and Control, pp. 1575-1576.
36.
House Select Committee on Intelligence, Risks and Control, pp. 1729-1770,
1848-1850, and 1858.
37.
House Select Committee on Intelligence, Performance of the Intelligence
Community, pp. 777-778 and 827-828. The committee issued a subpoena for "40
Committee" records on 6 November 1975.
38.
The Pike Report, p. 258.
39.
House Select Committee on Intelligence, Performance of the Intelligence
Community, p. 813.
40.
The Pike Report, p. 189.
41.
Pike as quoted in Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence
Community, p. 197.
42.
See Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
207.
43.
Ibid., p. 297.
44.
The New York Times, 26 January 1976, p. 1.
45.
See Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
169.
46.
See The New York Times, 26 January 1976, p. 1.
47.
See Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
170.
48.
See Congressional Record-House, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, 29 January
1976, p. 1639.
49.
Ibid., p. 1639.
50.
See David E. Rosenbaum, "House Prevents Release of Report," The
New York Times, 30 January 1976, p. 2.
51.
Quoted in Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence
Community, p. 162.
52.
Ibid., p. 163.
53.
See The Village Voice, 16 February 1976, p. 1. The Village Voice version
of the Pike Report, with an introduction by Philip Agee, was published in
Britain in 1977. See CIA, The Pike Report (Nottingham, England: Spokesman Books,
1977).
54.
See Smist, Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, p.
171.
55.
See The Pike Report, pp. 257-258. Under the Church Committee
recommendations and the subsequent establishment of a Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, responsibility for tactical military intelligence remained solely
within the jurisdiction of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
56.
See The New York Times, 10 October 1976, p. 6.
The CIA thought it Important enough to initiate "DAMAGE ASSESSMENT".
EDWARD LANSDALE
Contact Information tomnln@cox.net
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