The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

Independent research. Not affiliated with any government, agency, or company.

Agency

Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations (Church Committee)

Findings that rest on exhibits naming this entity

  • INF-5.6: The Church Committee's 1976 study of the FBI's COINTELPRO counted 2,370 approved actions in five domestic programs from 1956 to 1971 and described them as secret action designed to "disrupt" and "neutralize" target groups and individuals. It also quotes a 16 September 1970 FBI Philadelphia memorandum describing an effort to have New Left campus groups think "there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."
  • DEF-6.1: The Church Committee found that the FBI ran five COINTELPRO programs from 1956 to 1971 and approved 2,370 actions to "disrupt" and "neutralize" domestic groups and individuals, among them the November 1964 anonymous note to Martin Luther King Jr.
  • DEF-6.2: The Church Committee concluded that intelligence activities undermined citizens' constitutional rights primarily because checks and balances had not been applied. Congress then created the Senate and House intelligence committees and enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, with a seven-judge court.
  • DEF-6.10: The Church Committee found that until February 1976 the CIA kept covert relationships with about 50 American journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations, and that it produced, subsidized or sponsored more than a thousand books before the end of 1967.
  • POL-7.2: The Church Committee reported that the CIA's policy of 11 February 1976 barred paid or contractual relationships with accredited news correspondents and would end fewer than half of about 50 existing relationships with American journalists and media employees. The Committee wrote that "No mechanism exists to protect the U.S. public and the Congress from fallout from black propaganda or any other propaganda."

Exhibits naming this entity

  • Exhibit 299 23 April 1976. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations: COINTELPRO: The FBI's Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens (Church Committee, Book III)
  • Exhibit 301 23 April 1976. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Case Study (Church Committee, Book III)
  • Exhibit 302 26 April 1976. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans (Church Committee, Book II), S. Rep. 94-755
  • Exhibit 303 26 April 1976. United States Senate: Separate Views of Senator John G. Tower, Vice Chairman (Church Committee, Book II)
  • Exhibit 304 26 April 1976. United States Senate: Individual Views of Senator Goldwater (Church Committee, Book II)
  • Exhibit 305 26 April 1976. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations: Foreign and Military Intelligence (Church Committee, Book I), S. Rep. 94-755: Covert Relationships with the United States Media
  • Exhibit 853 20 October 1977. Rolling Stone (author Carl Bernstein): The CIA and the Media (Carl Bernstein), Rolling Stone, with the magazine's press release (copy in the National Security Archive)
  • Exhibit 927 20 November 1975. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee): Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, S. Rep. No. 94-465
  • Exhibit 1069 23 April 1976. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations: The FBI informant program, Philadelphia Field Office memorandum of 16 September 1970 (Church Committee, Book III)