[Source: rumble.com]

In September, CovertAction Magazine published an article entitled “We Need a New ‘Church Committee’ to Curb Massive Intelligence Agency Criminality Ranging From Illegal Surveillance to Torture and Assassination.”

And low and behold, the House-led GOP has set up what they call a new Church Committee—the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

The committee is headed by Jim Jordan (R-OH), a staunch Trump ally who has for months been investigating what he says is a bias in federal law enforcement against conservatives and who plans to use his gavel and subpoena power to escalate and expand that inquiry, according to The New York Times.[1]

Rep. Jim Jordan gave a speech nominating Rep. Kevin McCarthy to be the next Speaker of the House on January 3, 2023.
Jim Jordan giving a speech nominating Kevin McCarthy to be the next Speaker of the House on January 3, 2023. [Source: nypost.com]

Tom Cole (R-OK), the GOP chairman of the House Rules Committee, said the subcommittee modeled on the U.S. Senate’s 1970s Church Committee that investigated abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies, “will probe the radical left weaponization of the federal government in recent years.”

Tom Cole [Source: graydc.com]

The “radical left,” however, has been marginalized in U.S. politics for decades thanks largely to what the original Church Committee helped to expose—the FBI’s counterintelligence operation (COINTELPRO), in which it illegally infiltrated, sabotaged and destroyed left-wing groups.

Church Committee, White House and CIA
Church Committee hearings. [Source: nsarchive2.gwu.edu]

The original Church committee had also exposed massive CIA interference in foreign nations, which Tom Cole, Jim Jordan and most other Republicans have long been cheerleaders for.

The Scourge of Immorality in Undercover Intelligence Operations

A former military intelligence officer in the China-Burma India theater of World War II with a strong liberal voting record on matters pertaining to the environment, Frank Church’s career ambition was to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee like his political idol William Borah, an isolationist also from Idaho, who had supported U.S. neutrality in World War I; favored the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war; and opposed U.S. imperialism in Central America in the 1920s.

The Economist of London characterized Church (D-ID) as “the scourge of immorality in undercover intelligence operations and the inquisitor of corrupt practices by American corporations abroad.” [Church had also chaired a Senate investigation on multinational corporations.]

Senator Frank Church [Source: outlet.historicimages.com]

The same designation does not apply to Jim Jorden, who is a great friend of corporate America and the intelligence agencies, having fought against tax hikes throughout his career and supported the USA Patriot Act and covert regime-change operations in countries like Syria and Iran.

More Dubious Heirs to Church

On January 6, 2023, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced on the Tucker Carlson show the idea for a new Church Committee, saying that it had the approval of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and that McCarthy would appoint him to sit on the committee.

See clip of show here.

When Massie first won election to Congress in 2012, he thanked “the Tea Party, the liberty movement and Ronald Reagan”—an avowed foe of the Church Committee, whose administration worked assiduously to undercut its attempt to establish better oversight of the intelligence agencies, and orchestrated a massive covert intervention in Nicaragua that led to the Iran-Contra scandal.

The Gipper and CIA Director William Casey, a key architect of the Contra War. [Source: libertygalaxy.com]

Massie’s extreme right-wing views were apparent in his sponsorship of bills to abolish the Department of Education and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and his being the keynote speaker at the John Birch Society’s 60th anniversary celebration, where he referred to Massachusetts, where he went to college, as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Massachusetts.[2]

[Source: flickr.com]

The John Birch Society is an extreme right-wing group—named after an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent allegedly killed by the Communists during the Chinese civil war—which accused President Dwight Eisenhower and Vietnam War architect and rumored CIA agent Walt W. Rostow of being Soviet Communist agents.

A sign in a field

Description automatically generated with low confidence
[Source: phdessay.com]

In December 2021, just days after a series of school shootings, Massie earned notoriety for posing for a Christmas photo with his family proudly carrying guns and asking for more ammo.

Image
The new Frank Church? Oy vey! [Source: cnn.com]

One of the major revelations of the original Church Committee, it should be remembered, was the discovery that the CIA had manufactured a poison dart gun that was supposed to be used for assassinating foreign leaders and other enemies of the state.

Suspect in the Public Mind”: The 1970s, Global Corporations and America's  Multinational Moment — bv knapp
Frank Church, sitting next to John Tower (R-TX), holds up poison dart gun that the CIA had developed for assassinations. [Source: bvknapp.com]

Better Than Almost All Dems on Foreign Policy

As bad as he has been on many issues, Massie has called for the pardoning of Edward Snowden and aligned with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in opposing the U.S. sanctions on Russia and other countries and military aid to Ukraine, and was the only member of Congress to oppose an act that refused to recognize Russia’s “annexation” of Crimea (the Crimean people voted to rejoin Russia after the CIA backed an illegal coup in Ukraine in February 2014).

Further, Massie voted to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq and against $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, and introduced legislation to stop unauthorized military operations in Egypt and Syria, as well as legislation blocking unauthorized military aid from being sent to Syrian jihadist rebels.[3]

More Men of the Radical Right

As a staunch liberal, Frank Church, if he were still alive, would surely have serious concerns not only about Massie but also new House Speaker McCarthy.

An ally of President Trump, McCarthy received a 3% rating from the League of Conservation voters, a D rating from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and is Congress’s top recipient of campaign contributions from Saudi lobbying firms.[4]

In January 2020, after the United States assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, McCarthy adopted a playbook out of the old John Birch Society by criticizing then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for “defending Soleimani,” when Pelosi had called Soleimani a “bad person” who “did bad things.”

A person in a suit and tie

Description automatically generated with medium confidence
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy—a man of the radical right. [Source: nypost.com]

Jim Jordan’s record is even more dubious than that of McCarthy. Not only has he called for cutting federal funding to Planned Parenthood and sought to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, but he has also been named as a defendant in a lawsuit against Ohio State University for his role in allegedly covering up sexual abuse by the wrestling team physician when he was an assistant wrestling coach in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[5]

Failure of the Left

The fact that it is the radical right poised to establish a new Church Committee—at least in name—is a reflection of the moral decline of the Democratic Party since Frank Church’s day.

Church had been part of a group of genuinely progressive Democrats in the 1970s who opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam, rallied behind George McGovern’s 1972 “Come Home America platform,” and tried to expose and reign in CIA abuses.

[Source: ebay.com]

Today’s Democratic Party, by contrast, and its media echo chamber plays along with CIA psychological warfare operations—such as those in support of Russiagate and Zelensky—and has adopted mostly hawkish positions on wars waged by Democratic Party presidents and the new Cold War.

It has also often pejoratively labeled people who try and probe into the abuses of the intelligence agencies as “conspiracy theorists”—a term invented by the CIA in the attempt to discredit people who, based on a wealth of evidence, challenged the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of JFK.

By refusing to call out or challenge the abuses of the intelligence agencies, what passes for the left has ceded ground to the radical right, which is the one now exploiting the public’s distrust of the foreign policy establishment to bolster its own political fortunes.

Deranged Ploy by MAGA Extremists?

Jim McGovern [Source: radiomiami.org]

Jim McGovern (D-MA) decried the new “Church” Committee on the House floor as “nothing more than a deranged ploy by MAGA extremists who have hijacked the party and want to use taxpayer money to push their far-right conspiracy nonsense.”

Jordan responded: “A ploy? It’s not a ploy when the Department of Justice treats parents as terrorists—moms and dads simply showing up at a school board meeting to advocate for their son or daughter. It’s not a ploy when the FBI pays Twitter $3 million to censor American citizens. It’s not a ploy when the Department of Homeland Security tries to set up a ‘disinformation governance board’ because we all know that the department of homeland security can tell what’s good speech and what is bad speech.”

These comments make clear that there are at least some legitimate areas of investigation.

Chip Roy [Source: abc7amarillo.com]

Chip Roy (R-TX) told Fox News, however, that as part of the deal that secured his position as Speaker of the House, Rep. McCarthy had committed to giving the new Church hearing at least as much funding and staffing as the House special committee that investigated the January 6 riots, stating that “we got more resources, more specificity, more power to go after this recalcitrant Biden administration.”

This suggests a clear partisan agenda that goes against the spirit of the original Church Committee, and will spoil an opportunity to properly educate the public about the nefarious influence of the intelligence agencies and interrelated corruption of executive branch politicians in both major parties.


  1. Luke Broadwater and Catie Edmondson, “House Approves Panel to Review Government Bias,” The New York Times, January 11, 2023, A1.

  2. See Massie’s speech here. Massie obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in the early 1990s.

  3. Massie voted against sanctions to North Korea and Iran, and in 2017, expressed warranted skepticism over the role of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in the 2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. Also to his credit, on November 20, 2019, Massie was the sole “no” vote in Congress on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, which he called an “escalation” with the People’s Republic of China.

  4. McCarthy also led House efforts to repeal the modestly progressive Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

  5. Jordan has been accused of witness tampering and initimidation in the case. His locker had been next to that of Richard Strauss, the team physician, who committed suicide after the allegations came to light in 2005. Dunyasha Yetts, a former wrestler, said, “For God’s sake, Strauss’s locker was right next to Jordan’s and Jordan even said he’d kill him if he tried anything with him”—implying he knew what he was doing with the others.


CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptionsorders and donations from readers like you.

Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism

Click the whistle and donate

When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.

CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.

Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.

CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.

We sincerely thank you for your support.


Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.

Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.

Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.

By using this site, you agree to these terms above.


About the Author

7 COMMENTS

  1. It is not possible to have a Church-Style Committee today because the CIA has compartmentalized and outsourced illegal activities to Quasi-Non-Government Organizations (Quangos) such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an adjunct of the CIA created by Congress and funded by Congress and the CIA, and covertly operating under the auspices of CIA and not subject to the FOIA or GAO.

  2. Jim Jordan chair intelligence reform via new “Church Committee” to make it more right wing, more unaccountable. Nothing good ever comes from “Jacket-off” Jordan.

    With Chuck Schumer and Pelosi / Jeffries / Biden representing “the left” or opposition to this far right….can we expect a counter weight? hell no. they will fold like the cheap suits they are.

  3. This is not an opinion but just some added historical information about Frank Church.

    Senator Frank Church and his wife Bethine were mentors to a young Senator named Joe Biden when his wife and daughter were killed in an automobile crash soon after his election to the Senate. Biden worked closely with Church on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator (and later Vice President and President) Biden has remained an “honorary member” of the Board of Directors of the Frank Church Institute for many years.

    In 2010, Vice President Biden was awarded the Frank and Bethine Church Award for Public Service.

  4. Can we get rid of the use of inflammatory words like “far-left” and “far-right”? I honestly don’t see any difference between Pelosi and McCarthy, or Schumer and McConnell. As far as the members of the new committee, maybe they haven’t always voted in the interests of the working class (who has?), but right now these “far-right extremists” that you’re labeling as are the only members in Congress opposing the money laundering with actual far-right nazis in Ukraine.

    As far as Jan 6, I don’t like the people involved but I still oppose the mass incarceration and unfair treatment. The whole thing smells like an entrapment case, like the Whitmer “kidnapping” or the FBI entrapping Muslims under Bush. If this committee can prove that the feds are still targeting Americans, regardless of who they are or their beliefs, this is a good thing. Most of my more conservate friends are just as anti-war as me and my more progressive-leaning friends, and it’s people like us that are being targeted as domestic terrorists (like Woodrow Wilson targeted anyone who opposed USA involvement in WWI using the new Espionage Act).

    Can you please get over your own ideology beliefs? Some of these people you’re discrediting in this article have been trying to do some decent work, like Massie and Boebert are working with the progressives to get the feds out of marijuana issues and allow the VA to recommended weed over pain drugs. Massie (and Rand Paul) are willing to work with anyone to reduce our over-incarcerating issues. And as an Alaskan who still relies on hunting since most of Alaska isn’t on the road or electric grid, I oppose anyone who wants more gun control. Fix poverty issues since poverty and crime go hand-in-hand, and the feds can’t create a one-size-fits-all bill because issues inside major cities are vastly different than issues in rural and farming areas.

    • ignore the labels. they’ve divide us on purpose. the anti war lobby is a majority. despite that, did u notice…: “the war” wasn’t even in the top 10 “issues” during the midterm elections! Did u notice that? Did u notice the DNC can’t even let it’s primaries play out uninterrupted? Biden was running a solid 4th in DNC primaries 2019, and Clyburne/Pelosi “stopped the primary” and installed Biden the nominee. Literally true. No mention in press. This is NOT a democracy. There are no standards for journalism. no standards for elections. no standards for legislation.

Leave a Reply