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Covert Action Investigated by the Church Committee: 1975-76

Initially, the Church Committee asked the Agency to provide data on "all itscovert action activities." In June 1975, however, the committee scaled back its request to data on five specific programs, including the Agency's prior activities in Chile, as well as an overview of all covert action programs since World War II. In the end, the committee produced six staff reports on covert action pro-grams, only one of which (on Chile) was made public. It was here that the Agency's activities pursuant to Track II - the fruitless effort to mount a military coup to prevent Allende from coming to power - were made public and developed in considerable detail for the first time. But the committee was unable to conclude, despite exhaustive efforts to prove otherwise, that the Agency had been involved in the overthrow and murder of Allende three years later

In its final report of April 1976, however, the Church Committee gave the world (and the rest of Congress) a glimpse of covert action it had never hadbefore. Between 1961 and 1975, the committee reported, the Agency had conducted more than 900 "major" projects and "several thousand" smaller ones, three-quarters of which had never been reviewed outside the Agency. Instead of being an extraordinary tool to use when vital US interests were at stake, the committee found, covert action had become part of the routine with its own bureaucratic momentum.

Not only had such programs often failed to achieve their objectives, they had at times been self-defeating. Providing assistance to foreign parties, leaders, the press, and labor unions, the committee explained, often created a dependence upon the Agency that kept the recipients from doing more for themselves. The committee also believed intelligence analysis had been skewed to have it appear to policymakers that the Agency's covert action programs were succeeding. Looking at the cumulative effect of covert action, the committee questioned whether the gains for the United States outweighed the costs, especially the damage done to its reputation around the world. But it did not recommend doing away with it. Rather, the committee concluded that covert action should be employed only in exceptional cases where vital security interests of the United States were at stake.