House Suppresses Pike Committee Report on CIA Abuses
The U.S. House of Representatives on this day voted to not release the Pike Committee report on abuses by the intelligence agencies.
The Pike Committee was established on February 19, 1975, and its Senate counterpart, the Church Committee, was created on January 27, 1975. Both committees uncovered abuses of the rights of Americans by the CIA, the FBI, and the National Security Agency (NSA). The main points of the Pike Committee report had already been leaked to the press, notably to The New York Times.
Public outrage over CIA abuses was fueled by a sensational Times story on CIA spying on Americans, published on December 22, 1974. The public was already outraged by the growing number of reports of FBI misdeeds.
A leaked summary of the Pike Committee report, provided by reporter Daniel Schorr, was published by The Village Voice on February 16, 1976, under the headline, “The Report on the CIA that President Ford Doesn’t Want You to Read.” The Pike Committee report has never been released. The Church Committee reports were released and are still a valuable source of information about the intelligence agencies (see below).
Learn more about Schorr: Daniel Schorr, Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism (2001)
Learn more about the CIA: Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008)
Read Daniel Schorr’s FBI file: http://vault.fbi.gov/daniel-schorr
You can at least read the Senate Church Committee report on the intelligence agencies: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm
Learn about the history of the CIA: Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007)