This is the story of Sen. Frank Church, who exposed the dirty laundry of the CIA and the FBI nearly 50 years ago, and inspired congressional oversight of intelligence agencies. The Last Honest Man also doubles as a guide to high-stakes politics. In this book, James Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, examines Senator Frank Church, the man at the center of numerous investigations into abuses of power within the American government.
We live in a world today where it is understood that The United States has a powerful array of intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and others. And while much of what they do is classified, it's also understood that they're ultimately accountable to Congress and the American people for what they spend and what they do. But this was not always the case in Senator Church’s time and some politicians contend it is not the case now.
After helping conduct the Watergate inquiries, he formed a Senate committee that exposed the nefarious activities of the intelligence community, including the CIA’s alliance with the Mafia in an effort to assassinate Fidel Castro.
For 16 months, Church and his committee scrutinized the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and their many abuses. Church also examined presidents’ use of emergency powers to advance their agendas.
As a result of the discoveries of his committee, Church arrived at a difficult question: was the disgraced Richard Nixon really that different from his predecessors in the White House? We can ask: Was Trump really that different from his predecessors in the White House (with regard to intelligence agencies)?
In the author's view assassinations and coups carry a bipartisan legacy. It wasn't just Eisenhower and Nixon, Iran and Chile. It was also Kennedy, Cuba and Vietnam. Then we had Iran, Afghanistan, et al.
Iran and its aftermath still reverberate. But for that debacle, would Trumpism have attained the purchase it still possesses? Would our national divide be as deep - or intractable? We will bring the recent past to bear on the present in our discussions about U.S. intelligence agencies in this SDG
Week one A political prodigy at 14 to Church’s anti-war stance in 1967-8.
Chapters 1- 6
Week two The Congressional Dove discovers American corporate bribes to foreigners;
Chapter 7 - 11
Week three The loner in Congress: Washington versus homegrown strength; uncovering
assassinations
Chapter 12 – 15
Week four. The Mafia
Chapter 16 – 19
Week five. Starting to bear fruit; Hoover (the Man who made a police state of America)
Chapter 20 – 22
Week six. Assassinations are always in season
Chapter 23 – 26
Week seven. Reversal of political climate and the consequences of political loyalty (or
forsaking it)
Chapter 27 - End
James Risen, The Last Honest Man, Little, Brown and Company , 2023 392 pages
Plus scholarly articles to be provided by the Coordinator. A partial list of articles follows:
Marc Becker, The CIA in Ecuador, Duke University Press. (2020) pp 26-38
John Ferris, Coming in from the Cold War: The Historiography of American Intelligence, 1945–1990 Oxford University Press, Diplomatic History , (WINTER 1995), pp. 87-115
Foreign Policy Association, The Role of Undercover Operations, Great Decisions , 1985, eat Decisions (1985), pp. 76-86
Renze L. Hoeksema, The President's Role in Insuring Efficient, Economical, and Responsible Intelligence Services, Presidential Studies Quarterly , Spring, 1978, pp. 187-199
Loch Johnson, Seven Sins of Strategic Intelligence , World Affairs , Fall 1983, pp. 176-204
Loch Johnson, Legislative Reform of Intelligence Policy Polity , Spring, 1985, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Spring, 1985), pp. 549-573
Simon Wilmetts, The Burgeoning Fissures of Dissent: Allen Dulles and the Selling of the CIA in the Aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, History, Vol. 100, No. 2, (April 2015), pp. 167-188