US National Security, Intelligence and Democracy: From the Church Committee to the War on Terror

This volume examines the investigation by the 1975 Senate Select Committee (‘Church Committee’) into US intelligence abuses during the Cold War, and considers its lessons for the current ‘war on terror’.

This report remains the most thorough public record of America’s intelligence services, and many of the legal boundaries operating on US intelligence agencies today are the direct result of reforms proposed by the Church Committee, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Ch...