The Story of the Church Committee [Something Interesting #51]

In a similar vein to the Kinsey Reports post I provided earlier, this one is about a similarly shocking set of reports but this time focused on conspiracy.

I've been sitting on this topic for a while but think it might be fine to just go ahead and provide it now. If you know a little about it, the Church Committee was a set of Congressional hearings about all of the things the American intelligence community was up to post-World War II until the early 1970s (this is how the public found out about MKUltra and COINTELPRO). The reports that came out of the hearings are fascinating to skim through and should be available for those who want them. I posted both books and the citations below, along with more resources should you want to dig deeper:

The reports

Book One

Book Two

Full Citations

Other resources

Wikipedia entry on the Church Committee

Wikipedia entry on Frank Church

Write-up from George Washington University

Write-up from Levin Center

Write-up from the National Constitution Center

"40 years ago, Church Committee investigated Americans spying on Americans" by Thomas Young (Brookings)