Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI

by Kathryn S. Olmsted

Overview

Just four months after Richard Nixon's resignation, New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh unearthed a new case of government abuse of power: the CIA had launched a domestic spying program of Orwellian proportions against American dissidents during the Vietnam War. The country's best investigative journalists and members of Congress quickly mobilized to probe a scandal that seemed certain to rock the foundations of this secret government. Subsequent investigations disclosed that the CIA had plotted to kill foreign leaders and that the FBI had harassed civil rights and student groups. Some called the scandal 'son of Watergate.' Many observers predicted that the investigations would lead to far-reaching changes in the intelligence agencies. Yet, as Kathryn Olmsted shows, neither the media nor Congress pressed for reforms. For all of its post-Watergate zeal, the press hesitated to break its long tradition of deference in national security coverage. Congress, too, was unwilling to challenge the executive branch in national security matters. Reports of the demise of the executive branch were greatly exaggerated, and the result of the 'year of intelligence' was a return to the status quo. American History/Journalism

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807863701
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	11/09/2000
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Kathryn S. Olmsted is a lecturer in history at the University of California at Davis.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Perceptive and gracefully written history.—Journal of American History

This is a fascinating study of how, just months after Watergate, both press and Congress quietly retreated to the same silk-gloved handling of the CIA and FBI in the name of national security.—Publishers Weekly

Olmsted successfully confronts and refutes the heroic myths surrounding post-Watergate journalism.—Nation

Kathryn Olmsted has provided a useful summary of the Frank Church and Otis Pike investigations. . . . Her conclusions are devastating: Congressional leadership had little interest in pursuing the charges; Gerald Ford's White House, recognizing the complicity of the executive branch, fought skillfully to limit and discredit the inquiries; and the media proved to be a useful, compliant accomplice of both.'-Nation

This important book is timely as the future of the CIA is debated in both the scholarly and government communities.—Choice

Olmsted . . . takes us back to the mid-1970s, when the spooks were on the run. . . . She ably chronicles the fall from high expectation to Washington handwringing. . . . Olmsted explodes the myth that this era was a time of journalistic courage and a heyday of investigative reporting.—Washington Monthly

A timely and outstanding contribution to a debate of central concern to observers of U.S. political culture and international relations. Olmsted boldly articulates her sympathies, and she provides abundant evidence and cogent arguments to support them. Many readers will disagree with her judgments; none can ignore them.—Richard H. Immerman, Temple University

Editorial Reviews

Conventional wisdom would have it that, in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, the nation's press was emboldened to enter a new phase of investigative zeal. Olmsted, a lecturer in history at U.C.- Davis, provides an absorbing contrarian account of the extent to which, with a few singular exceptions, the press retreated from such zeal, in part intimidated by the discovery of their own potential power. Thus, four months after Nixon's resignation, when New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh launched a series charging that the CIA, "forbidden by law from operating in the U.S.," had engaged in massive domestic spying, his reports were greeted with skepticism and tentativeness in follow-ups by fellow journalists. (Hersh's vindication came from CIA Director William Colby's Senate testimony, in which he disputed only the characterization of wrongdoing as "massive.") Olmsted charts how Hersh's story, along with a cautious but competitive exploration of FBI abuses by the Washington Post, resulted in two congressional investigations that also had the potential to break the code of deference previously accorded to organizations responsible for national security by both Congress and the press. Particularly compelling is the author's account of how colleagues excoriated reporter Daniel Schorr when he went to the Village Voice with the confidential results of one of the investigations, after having been silenced by his own employers, CBS. This is a fascinating study of how, just months after Watergate, both press and Congress quietly retreated to the same silk-gloved handling of the CIA and FBI in the name of national security. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Conventional wisdom would have it that, in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, the nation's press was emboldened to enter a new phase of investigative zeal. Olmsted, a lecturer in history at U.C.- Davis, provides an absorbing contrarian account of the extent to which, with a few singular exceptions, the press retreated from such zeal, in part intimidated by the discovery of their own potential power. Thus, four months after Nixon's resignation, when New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh launched a series charging that the CIA, 'forbidden by law from operating in the U.S.,' had engaged in massive domestic spying, his reports were greeted with skepticism and tentativeness in follow-ups by fellow journalists. (Hersh's vindication came from CIA Director William Colby's Senate testimony, in which he disputed only the characterization of wrongdoing as 'massive.') Olmsted charts how Hersh's story, along with a cautious but competitive exploration of FBI abuses by the Washington Post, resulted in two congressional investigations that also had the potential to break the code of deference previously accorded to organizations responsible for national security by both Congress and the press. Particularly compelling is the author's account of how colleagues excoriated reporter Daniel Schorr when he went to the Village Voice with the confidential results of one of the investigations, after having been silenced by his own employers, CBS. This is a fascinating study of how, just months after Watergate, both press and Congress quietly retreated to the same silk-gloved handling of the CIA and FBI in the name of national security.

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly

Kathryn Olmsted has provided a useful summary of the Frank Church and Otis Pike investigations.

"Nation"

Olmsted successfully confronts and refutes the heroic myths surrounding post-Watergate journalism.

"Nation"

Perceptive and gracefully written history.

"Journal of American History"

This important book is timely as the future of the CIA is debated in both the scholarly and government communities.

"Choice"

This is a fascinating study.

"Publishers Weekly"

From the Publisher