Daniel Schorr Faces Charges for Leaking Pike Committee Report
Award-winning CBS reporter Daniel Schorr leaked a summary of the House of Representatives Pike Committee report on abuses by intelligence agencies to the Village Voice, which it published on February 16, 1976.
Since the House had voted not to release the Pike Committee report on January 29, 1976, Schorr’s leak led to his suspension by CBS and an investigation by the House, which the House Ethics Committee authorized on this day (exactly one year to the day after it created the Pike Committee). Schorr was threatened with jail for contempt of Congress if he did not disclose his source for the Pike Committee report. He did not, but in the end the committee voted 6–5 against citing him for contempt.
The official Pike Committee has never been released (and in fact may not even exist as a full report), although much of its contents were leaked to the press in early 1976 before the leak to the Voice. The Church Committee reports (available on the web) and the leaked Pikc Committee material provide a detailed account of the illegal and outrageous violations of Americans’ rights by the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and other federal agencies.
The Church Committee reports are still a valuable source of information the lawlessness of federal intelligence agencies.
Read: Daniel Schorr, Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism (2001)
See Daniel Schorr discuss his book: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june01/schorr_5-29.html
Read Schorr’s FBI File: http://vault.fbi.gov/daniel-schorr
Learn more about the Church and Pike Committee investigations: Kathryn Olmstead, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (1996)
Read the Senate Church Committee reports: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm