How the CIA Played the Senate
And boosted George H. Bush toward the presidency.
In the Intercept, James and Thomas Risen tell the story of a turning point in the fortunes of the CIA: the 1975 assassination of station chief Richard Welch, a blow that proved a boon to clandestine service.
WELCH’S ASSASSINATION WAS huge news and struck a painful political nerve in Washington, coming at the end of a year of stunning disclosures about the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community by the Senate’s Church Committee, which, throughout 1975, had been conducting the first major congressional investigation of the CIA. The Church Committee uncovered so many secrets and generated so many headlines that pundits were already calling 1975 “the Year of Intelligence.”
The Risens recount how Agency’s defenders used Welch’s death to stem the tide of criticism and win confirmation of an ambitious former congressman named George H. Bush as CIA director.
THE WHITE HOUSE and CIA followed a subtle but effective strate…
