The Last Honest Man

December 1, 2022

With the national security state growing ever larger, two-time Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist Risen (Pay Any Price) tracks back to the 1970s, when Idaho senator Frank Church challenged intelligence abuses following the Watergate scandal. In the process, he uncovered assassination plots by the CIA, links between the Kennedys and the Mafia, and the surveillance of civil rights activists by the NSA and FBI.

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Starred review from March 1, 2023
Congressional investigations can be double-edged swords. The party in power can launch inquiries into individuals or agencies for political purposes or to legitimately right wrongs. As the country in recent years has endured lengthy probes into the 9/11 attacks and the January 6 insurrection, few may remember the predecessor for such congressional commissions. In the mid-1970s, Idaho senator Frank Church was convinced that the CIA was involved in corrupt manipulations of foreign policy. His eponymous committee eventually investigated both the FBI and the NSA, uncovering illegal acts that ranged from planned assassinations of foreign leaders to invasive surveillance of American citizens, all in the name of national security. Church was that rarity among elected representatives: an ideologue fully prepared to sacrifice his career to a great cause, and a brazenly ambitious politician perpetually running for a greater office. With the same government agencies once again under fire from Congress, the Church Committee is being championed as the blueprint for renewed interest in accountability. A prolific author focused on the CIA and controversial government policies, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen, with journalist Thomas Risen, pairs the gripping pace of an espionage thriller with the intense research of a comprehensive and timely account of government oversight.

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Starred review from March 15, 2023
Vigorous biography of the Idaho senator who, "like an American Cicero, offered the United States a brief glimpse of what it would be like to turn away from its imperialistic ambitions." Democratic politician Frank Church (1924-1984), who was elected to the U.S. Senate before Idaho became a solidly Republican state, displayed a natural ability to maneuver through the knotty landscape of politics. As two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning political journalist Risen writes, he didn't mind making enemies in the absence of allies: "Frank Church was a loner in the Senate...and didn't go out of his way to cultivate close ties." A strong supporter of John F. Kennedy, he went up against Lyndon Johnson on a number of key issues. Though he endorsed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (and later regretted it), he proved a stalwart opponent of the Vietnam War. He came to equate that war with a covert program of American imperialism, and after helping conduct the Watergate inquiries, he formed a Senate committee that exposed the nefarious activities of the intelligence community, including the CIA's alliance with the Mafia in an effort to assassinate Fidel Castro and its connection to many other killings--perhaps even JFK's. Woven into Risen's story are the still-unsolved murders of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and a made-man foot soldier, both of whom supplied the Church Committee with information. Church also examined presidents' use of emergency powers to advance their agendas; in this as well as other discoveries of his committee, he arrived at "a difficult question: was the disgraced Richard Nixon really that different from his predecessors in the White House?" The answer is debatable, but Risen credits Church with preventing the rise of the deep state, which "remains a myth, a right-wing conspiracy theory," precisely "because Frank Church brought the intelligence community fully into the American system of government." A welcome restoration of a largely forgotten politician who navigated issues that continue to reverberate.

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