On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the independent nongovernmental National Security Archive. He discusses the historic 1975 expose of the CIA, “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders,” a report made public fifty years ago by the special investigative US Senate Committee led by Idaho Senator Frank Church, the now little remembered “Church Committee.”

They discuss the report’s revelations, the unsuccessful attempts of the Gerald Ford administration to halt its circulation, the impact of its release, made timely now as the Trump administration speaks quite openly and candidly about overthrowing and murdering Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

Kornbluh says that at the time of the Church Committee, the US was in a period of scandal. The nation was actively asking what the role of covert agencies should be in a democracy as people became more aware of the things that were being done with their tax dollars and in their name. This remains a question worth asking and a history worth remembering as there has been a covert operation scandal every five years since the Church Committee. 

Peter Kornbluh is a Senior Analyst at the National Security Archive. He currently directs the Archive’s Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects. He was co-director of the Iran-Contra documentation project and director of the Archive’s project on U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. From 1990-1999, he taught at Columbia University as an adjunct assistant professor of international and public affairs.

Featured image of Senator Frank Church who chaired the 1975 Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, known as the Church Committee via Wikimedia Commons.

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