Frank Church

Idaho senator whose 1975 committee exposed abuses by the CIA, FBI, and NSA.

Overview

Elected to the Senate in 1956 at the age of 32, Church became an early critic of the Vietnam War and co-sponsored the Cooper-Church Amendment limiting military operations in Cambodia. In 1975 he chaired the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, which documented assassination plots against foreign leaders, the FBI's COINTELPRO program, and domestic surveillance. Its work led to permanent intelligence oversight committees and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. He ran for president in 1976, chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, and lost his seat in the 1980 Reagan landslide.