NSA = REVEALED AND CAN NEVER BE HIDDEN AGAIN 

“Pike will pay for this, you wait and see—we’ll destroy him for this.”

— Mitchell Rogovin, CIA special counsel, 1976

Pike = Conservative Cold War Democrat from a mostly-Republican Long Island district

Pike = Supported Vietnam War long after most northern Democrats abandoned it

Pike = Ambitious political animal standing up to secrecy-obsessed NatSec State

Pike = Interested in getting to the guts of the intelligence apparatus, its power, its funding, its purpose = Asked questions never asked or answered since the start of the Cold War = Exactly the questions intel apparatus did not want asked:

What was America’s intelligence budget?
What was the purpose of the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies programs? Were they succeeding by their own standards?
Were taxpayers getting their money’s worth?
Were they making America safer?

Pike Committee = Pulled up the floorboards discovering that the entire intelligence apparatus was a dangerous boondoggle.

Pike Committee = Taxpayers getting fleeced

Pike Committee = NSA and CIA = Direct threat to America’s security & democracy

Pike Committee = asked right questions but led to very wrong answers to powers

Pike Committee = Got 1st ever admission from CIA director William Colby that NSA was routinely tapping Americans’ phone calls.

Pike Committee = GOT NSA Head, Lew Allen Jr., to testify in public 1st time in history = NSA publicly said it could legally wiretap Americans’

Pike Committee = Discovered NSA was largest intelligence agency and was birthed by a series of executive orders under Truman at peak of Cold War hysteria

Pike Committee = NSA’s was chartered to be beyond legal accountability = NO government OVERSITE