House Creates Pike Committee to Investigate Abuses by the CIA, other Agencies
The House of Representatives on this day created the Pike Committee to investigate abuses by the U.S. Intelligence agencies.
This action followed both the Watergate Scandal and the exposé of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spying on American citizens by The New York Times on December 22, 1974. The Pike Committee in the House paralleled the Church Committee, created by the Senate on January 27, 1975. Both committees uncovered significant abuses of the intelligence agencies: the CIA, the FBI, and other federal agencies.
After extensive public hearings, however, the House voted not to publish the Pike Committee’s report on January 29, 1976 The public mood began to turn against further exposés. Reporter Daniel Schorr obtained a copy of the report’s summary, however, and leaked it to the Village Voice, which published it on February 16, 1976. No full Pike Committee report has ever been found and may not exist. Material from a planned report, however, was leaked and published in a series of news reports before the House voted not to publish it.
Although the Pike Committee report was never published, the Church Committee’s reports are an invaluable source of information about the abuses of the intelligence agencies and the role of presidents, both Republican and Democratic, in approving many if not most of the abuses.
Read the Senate Church Committee reports: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm
Learn more about the Pike and Church Committees: Kathryn Olmstead, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (1996)