The Senate Creates the Select Committee on Intelligence

On May 19, 1976, the Senate voted to create a new permanent intelligence oversight committee. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana surely felt gratified, having been the first senator to propose such a committee more than 20 years before.

Mansfield had first entered politics in 1942 when he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives. In the House, Mansfield had voted for the National Security Act of 1947, which reorganized the U.S. military and created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to "correlate and evaluate intelligence relating to the national security" and to advise the newly formed National Security Council about intelligence issues. Two years later, he voted for the Central Intelligence Agency Act, which exempted the nation's spy agency from disclosing its personnel, budget, and operations, the traditional mechanisms by which Congress oversees the executive branch.

When Mansfield entered the Senate in 1953, he believed that the CIA was vital to the nation's security and that it "must maintain secrecy to be effective." He worried, however, that if "secrecy becomes sacrosanct, it invites abuse." He sought to reform the practice of placing oversight responsibility in the hands of a few senators. Only six months into his first Senate term, Mansfield submitted a resolution to create a joint House-Senate congressional CIA oversight committee. He assured his colleagues concerned about protecting national secrets that it would "safeguard as well as supervise the policies of the CIA." Perhaps unknowingly, Mansfield had violated two unwritten, long-standing Senate traditions with his action. First, freshmen senators were to be seen and not heard. Second, Mansfield had introduced a significant bill without the chair's approval, thereby ignoring a long-standing courtesy extended to committee chairs, who by virtue of their seniority, wielded power and influence over all legislative business. Leverett Saltonstall, the Massachusetts Republican who then chaired the Armed Services Committee (and its intelligence subcommittee), had helped to establish the unusual oversight system in the late 1940s. Determined to protect intelligence sources and methods from leaks, and guarding his considerable power over the CIA, Saltonstall let the bill die in committee. Mansfield reintroduced his bill in '54, and again it met with the same result.²

In February, President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, announced his opposition to the bill. The president implied that Congress couldn't be trusted to protect intelligence secrets. After debating the measure privately, the Senate's Republican caucus broke with the president and declared its general support for the bill. Close observers predicted that it would pass easily. But the Senate's senior members united to halt reform. Appropriations Chair Carl Hayden of Arizona, who led one of the intelligence subcommittees, defended the status quo. "What the Congress has needed to know in the past it has been told," he wrote. "What the Congress will require to know in the future it can obtain through means already in existence." Senator Saltonstall insisted that a new committee was unnecessary. "I consider I have been informed of the activities of the CIA to the extent that . . . is wise," he said. Georgia Senator Richard Russell, who chaired the Armed Services Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, denounced the proposal. "Russell jealously guarded national secrets from foreign enemies as well as his colleagues," one biographer observed, "who he thought could not be trusted to keep classified information confidential." The Senate defeated Mansfield's bill by a vote of 27-59, with 10 of Mansfield's co-sponsors defecting to vote against it. The episode served as evidence of the influence of the Senate's so-called committee "barons." Mansfield's effort failed again in 1958.⁴

Senate Democrats elected Mansfield as their whip in 1960 and as their party leader the following year. He worked tirelessly to support the legislative agendas of two Democratic presidents throughout the 1960s, but he never forgot the intelligence oversight issue. A series of exposés and congressional inquiries kept the issue before the public, too. In 1970, a former intelligence officer published a whistleblower account of the U.S. Army's secret domestic surveillance program. A subsequent Senate investigation revealed that army intelligence officers had infiltrated civil rights groups, posed as anti-Vietnam war protestors, and spied on members of Congress known to be critical of U.S. policy. The army responded by quietly ending the program, but the episode suggested a failure of congressional intelligence oversight.⁵

Another blow to the credibility of the intelligence community came in December 1974. The New York Times published a deeply reported exposé alleging that the CIA conducted a nationwide domestic surveillance operation in direct violation of its charter, targeting civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activists. Mansfield instructed his staff to draft a resolution for a special committee to investigate the allegations, which the Senate approved on January 27, 1975.⁷

Chaired by Senator Frank Church of Idaho, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (known as the Church Committee) conducted a wide-ranging investigation that culminated with a series of riveting public hearings in the fall of 1975. Americans learned details about the nation's biological weapons programs, White House domestic surveillance operations, and an FBI program designed to severely weaken the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.⁸

Despite the revelations, powerful senior senators worked to shield the intelligence community from more comprehensive oversight. Led by Armed Services Chair John Stennis of Mississippi (Russell's protégé who had become chairman in 1969), they privately strategized. "I have always felt that the less we know about the CIA and what it is doing the better off the country is," Barry Goldwater, an Arizona Republican and member of the Church Committee, wrote to Stennis. Goldwater urged him to make the intelligence subcommittee permanent and appoint a moderate to lead it.⁹

Ribicoff called Senator Mansfield as the committee's lead witness. The abuses uncovered by the Church Committee were "the direct result of congressional neglect and inattention," Mansfield contended. Former CIA Director William Colby testified that a permanent oversight committee would make "our intelligence service . . . responsible to our Constitution . . . and we will continue to have the best intelligence in the world." Senator Goldwater countered that "If the Congress wants more oversight, the existing committee can and should be required to perform." After hearing the testimony of 26 witnesses, the Government Operations Committee reported an amended S. Res. 400 to the Rules Committee (which reviews all committee proposals) and the Judiciary Committee (which provides FBI oversight) for concurrent review. The committee's revised proposal would create an 11-member committee with membership restricted to six years and establish processes for protecting and releasing sensitive information.¹¹

Under Cannon's guidance, the Rules Committee rewrote Baker's bill. "The Senate Rules Committee … is now chopping up the original version of S. 400 to assuage the powerful elders of Congress who want to preserve their military and intelligence baronies intact," reported staff writers at The Washington Post. The committee's final report, approved with a 5 to 4 vote, concluded that establishing a standing intelligence oversight committee would be "precipitate and unwise, and constitute an overreaction," to the Church Committee's investigation. Instead, the committee proposed another temporary committee to explore the question of whether a new committee should be created. Senator Baker angrily dismissed the idea as a "little more than an impotent study group-authorized to study the same material that [the Church Committee] spent 15 months studying." An editorial in The Washington Post condemned the measure. "To restore oversight to the very panels whose inadequacy has been so thoroughly demonstrated is an exercise in the unthinkable." The Post noted that powerful chairmen, including Cannon, remained obstacles to reform. "Wittingly or not, the Senate barons balking committee change are handmaidens of executive abuse and patsies for executive power."¹³

Senate reformers were understandably frustrated with the Rules Committee proposal, and so were the American people. One Dearborn, Michigan, couple urged the formation of "a committee to oversee the C.I.A." Noting the nation's bicentennial year, they wrote, "As we celebrate our Great Revolution, wouldn't it be nice to know that our hard-earned rights could not in the future be over-run?" A former CIA analyst expressed "distress" for the status quo. "I worked for CIA for 20 years," he wrote. "I do not believe the existing oversight system has ever been effective. . . . We need action responsive to the findings of the Church Committee." These letters suggested that some Americans had more than a passing interest in intelligence reform.¹⁴

The Senate debated the new bill for four days, with Mansfield growing notably impatient. "We have a chance to do something constructive. There have been 15 months of hearings. What do they mean to Senators? Have Senators read the reports? Have they even read the newspapers? Are they going to allow this lack of supervision to continue?"¹⁶

On May 19, 1976, the Senate voted to establish an intelligence oversight committee, first proposed by Mansfield more than 20 years before. The new committee would be composed of 15 members-eight selected from Appropriations, Armed Services, Judiciary, and Foreign Relations Committees, and the remaining members drawn from the Senate-at-large. Membership on the committee would be limited to eight years. "We wanted to make sure that the Senators on this committee would not get a vested interest in the intelligence community and find themselves apologists for the intelligence apparatus instead of doing their oversight job," insisted Ribicoff in defending term limits. The new committee, later named the Select Committee on Intelligence, would have sole budget and legislative authority over the CIA. It would share oversight of military intelligence with Armed Services, and of the FBI with Judiciary-a major concession to the barons who had defended their committees' jurisdictions. The bill also provided a process for releasing sensitive information. The House established its Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 1977.¹⁷

The creation of the Select Committee on Intelligence represented the triumph of a generation of reformers over the objections and obfuscations of powerful senior members. Its formation was the capstone of Mike Mansfield's 24-year Senate career.

Notes

1. Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, Public Law 79-601, August 2, 1946, 60 Stat. 812; Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, Public Law 81-110, June 20, 1949, 63 Stat. 208; William N. Raiford, "Senate Oversight of Intelligence," Congressional Research Service, January 1, 1976, 1; L. Britt Snider, The Agency and The Hill: CIA's Relationship with Congress, 1946-2004 (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2008), 8; David M. Barrett, The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 26; Congressional Record, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., November 23, 1971, 42930.

2. "Statement of Senator Mike Mansfield Before Senate Committee on Rules," January 25, 1956, RG 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 84th Cong., Committee on Rules and Administration, Sen 84A-E15, S. Con. Res. 2, Box No. 669, Center for Legislative Archives (CLA), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Establishing a Joint Committee on Central Intelligence, S. Con. Res. 42, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., July 6, 1953; "Obituary: Ex-Senator W. Magnuson Dies at 84," Washington Post, May 21, 1989; "Mansfield is Remembered as a Noble Politician," HeraldNet (Everett, WA), October 10, 2001, accessed January 16, 2026, https://www.heraldnet.com/news/mansfield-is-remembered-as-a-noble-politician/; To Establish a Joint Committee on Central Intelligence, S. Con. Res. 69, 83rd Cong., 2nd sess., March 1, 1954; To Establish a Joint Committee on Central Intelligence, S. Con. Res. 2, 84th Cong., 1st sess., January 6, 1955.

3. Intelligence Activities, Letter from Chairman, Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government transmitting its Report, H. Doc. 201, 84th Cong., 1st sess., June 29, 1955; Raiford, "Senate Oversight of Intelligence," 1; Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Joint Committee on Central Intelligence Agency, S. Rep. 84-1570, 84th Cong., 2nd sess., February 22, 1956, 19-20.

4. "G.O.P. Senators Back C.I.A. Check," New York Times Feb 22, 1956, 20; Allen Drury, "Senate Rejects C.I.A. 'Watchdog,'" New York Times, April 12, 1956, 1; Wendy Wolff and Donald Ritchie, eds., Minutes of the U.S. Senate Republican Conference: Sixty-second Congress through Eighty-eighth Congress, 1911-1964, S. Doc. 105-19 (Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1998), 780; Jeff Woods, Richard B. Russell: Southern Nationalism and American Foreign Policy (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007), 53; Congressional Record, 84th Cong., 2nd sess., April 11, 1956, 6048-63; "CIA 'Watchdog' Committee," in CQ Almanac 1956, vol. 12 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1957), 509; "A Failure of Oversight," Washington Post, May 2, 1976, 34; To Establish a Joint Committee on Central Intelligence, S. Con. Res.101, 85th Cong., 2nd sess., July 15, 1958.

5. Katherine Scott, Reining in the State: Civil Society and Congress in the Vietnam and Watergate Eras (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 2013), 67-96.

6. Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New History (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2022), 391-411; Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1990), 323-82.

7. Seymour M. Hersh, "Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years: Files on Citizens," New York Times, Dec 22, 1974, 1.

8. Loch Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1985).

9. Barry Goldwater to John Stennis, January 19, 1976, RG 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 94th Cong., Armed Services Committee, Box No. 1242, CLA, NARA.

10. Senate Committee on Government Operations, Oversight of U.S. Government Intelligence Functions: Hearings on S. 317, S. 189, S. Con. Res. 4, S. 2893, S. 2865, 94th Cong., 2nd sess., January 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, and February 2, 3, 5, and 6, 1976, 123, 352.

11. Ibid, 10, 12, 123, 340, 352, 368-69.

12. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Proposed Standing Committee on Intelligence Activities: Hearings Before the Committee on Rules and Administration, 94th Cong., 2nd sess., March 31, and April 1, 2, 5, 1976, 96; Walter Pincus, "Plan for Hill Intelligence Unit Assailed," Washington Post, April 1, 1976, A2.

13. Proposed Standing Committee on Intelligence Activities, 49, 52; Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Proposed Standing Committee on Intelligence Activities: Report of the Committee on Rules and Administration Together with Minority Views and Recommendations of the Committee on the Judiciary, S. Rep. 94-770, 94th Cong., 2nd., sess., April 29, 1976, 8; Laurence Stern and Walter Pincus, "Hill Reform of CIA Review Stymied," Washington Post, April 19, 1976, A1; "Senate Establishes Intelligence Panel," in CQ Almanac 1976, vol. 32 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1976), 298; Senators Howard Baker, Jr., and Gary Hart, "Dear Colleague," May 6, 1976, RG 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 94th Cong., Armed Services Committee, Box No. 1242, CLA, NARA; "A Failure of Oversight," Washington Post, May 2, 1976, 34.

14. Col., USMC (retired) to Hon. Howard W. Cannon, U.S. Senate, April 11, 1976; Dearborn, MI, residents to Honorable Howard Cannon, May 5, 1976; Undated letter to Howard Cannon; Letter to Hon. Howard Cannon, Chairman, May 6, 1976, RG 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 94th Cong., Committee on Rules and Administration, Box No. 5, CLA, NARA.

15. "Robert C. Byrd: Tactician and Technician," Katherine Scott and James Wyatt in Leadership in the U.S. Senate, Colton Campbell, ed., (NY: Routledge, 2019), 68-102; Congressional Record, 94th Cong., 2nd sess., May 13, 1976, 13566-695.

16. Congressional Record, 94th Cong., 2nd sess., May 13, 1976, 13998; "Senate Establishes Intelligence Panel," 298-99.

17. The Senate eliminated this term limit when it approved S. Res. 445 on October 9, 2004; Congressional Record, 94th Cong., 2nd sess., May 13, 1976, 14260; Spencer Rich, "Senate Creates CIA Panel: Budgetary, Legislative Role," Washington Post, May 20, 1976, A1.