In last week's column ("Reckless congressional action," dddnews.com, May 17, 2006), we ended with Senator Frank Church challenging President Ford by attacking the secrecy surrounding the CIA's actions in the war against communism. But, that was no surprise to President Ford. He had earlier written a top secret memorandum, January 4, 1975, addressed to Richard Helms, Ambassador to Iran, and former CIA director, and to his three White House Counselors, and to Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, then Deputy Assistant to the President for the ultra secret National Security Affairs agency, NSA. The memo was classified "Top Secret"by Henry Kissinger, and was not "declassified" until November 24, 1998. Here are some excerpts from that memo: President Ford wrote, . . . "Dick [Helms, kk] we are in a mess, I want you to tell me whatever you want. I believe the CIA is essential to the country. It has to exist and perform its functions. We will have a Blue Ribbon Panel look into these charges . . . it will investigate the domestic activities of the CIA." Helms replies, "Why not the FBI? They overlap and you may as well get to the bottom of it." The President replies . . . "I hope they [Church committee, kk] will stay within their charter . . . the CIA needs to remain a strong and viable agency . . . It would be a shame if the public uproar . . . damaged the integrity of the CIA." ("Ford Administration memoranda of Conversations," www.ford.utexas.edu/LIBRARY/DOCUMENT/MEM... You will notice the President did not include his current CIA director (Colby) in this memo, by then, he did not trust him.

We wrote last week that there was to be no shortage of "drama" when the Church committee began hearings in late September of 1975. Here's an example of the "drama": For three days in September of 1975, Senator Church called CIA Director Colby, Richard Helms (remember, the former CIA director, and then ambassador to Iran), and CIA scientists before his committee. They gave evidence, as a dramatic "barrage," that over the past eighteen years the agency had spent three million dollars developing poisons and biological weapons. That was a bombshell to the American public. Church and members of his committee held up a CIA-designed gun, used to fire poison darts, for the cameras.

But before the "gun" appeared before the committee's cameras, and before the questioning began, Daniel Schorr, and other left wing TV and radio correspondents, had "coached" members of the committee about which of the questions the committee had prepared where "newsworthy."

Then, as today, certain members of the press were privy, well in advance of their asking, to the particular questions certain senators would ask. Schorr and his leftie buddies "edited" potential questions for their "drama" value, but they worked only for the left wing of the committee. (Schorr was, eventually, to pay with his job and reputation as an "objective" journalist, for his "unwitting" propaganda aid to our country's enemies, the communists.) But, back to the gun, it had a crazy and complicated name. The gun designed to fire those poison darts was called the "Nondiscernable Microbioinoculater." I guess meaning, a non-traceable, every-so-tiny, poison- tipped, microscopic in size, needle? By the time the committee hearings appeared on television news (they weren't live as they are today), Colby knew that his days as Director of the CIA was soon to be over. The spectacle of the senators passing around the "Nondiscernable Microbioinoculater" was too much for President Ford and his advisors. Colby wrote in his memoirs that, "The impact of the toxin spectacular, and especially the fact that I delivered the dart gun when Congress demanded it, blew the roof off. . . . " (Colby, "Honorable Men," pp. 440-44).

The president's first major clash with the Church committee came after Ford had telephoned Church asking him not to reveal the SIGNET (top secret use of communication capabilities) operations, a subject that would surely come up in public hearings on the NSA. But, the Church committee voted 5-4 to have public hearings on the NSA. Those hearings revealed the top secret that from 1968 to 1973, the NSA had plucked the conversations of 1, 680 people and assorted groups from a "watch list." Our enemies, as well as our people, learned for the first time of our awesome ability to "monitor" all forms of communication. Our ability to monitor our enemies dried up after that, and created a "congressional attitude" that was to end in countless loss of American lives from then to the present time. However, the real kick in the teeth to our intelligence agencies came from the next congressional revelation.

The committee revealed that the intelligence community had been "involved" in political assassinations in foreign countries, and that intelligence agencies of our government had active "assassination" plots at the time of the hearings. On November 20, 1975, the Church committee voted to publish its entire report entitled, "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders." The president had asked (on advice of the CIA and others) the committee to at least not publish the names of twelve particular agents who could lose their lives as the result of the report. The Church committee refused the president's request, and published the names (Frank Smist, Jr., "Congress Oversees the United States Intelligence Community, 1947-1989," pp. 51-52). A dramatic and immediate result of the Church committee's purely politically motivated publication of their report was the murder of the Athens CIA station chief, Richard S. Welch, on December 23, 1975. There is no doubt in my mind that Senator Church, who was lusting, unsuccessfully, for the presidential nomination by the Democrat party, murderously sacrificed, with those treasonable congressional hearings, the heroic intelligence officer Richard Welch. Richard Welch had spent his entire life risking his life for our country. Frank Church had spent his life bootlicking, and kissing "donkeys," for votes and personal enrichment.

It was to take several years, and dozens more deaths of CIA agents and members of the military, for congress to moderate its murderous interference in the sometime dirty, but essential, job of spying. The congress, by making it nearly impossible for our intelligence agencies to work, is more than partly responsible for 9/11. Congress was responsible for the "opening acts" preceding 9/11: the 1993 first bombing of the World Trade Center; the USS Cole attack; "Black Hawk Down"; US embassy bombings, including Nairobi Dar es Salaam, where 234 were killed and 5,000 injured, and the Oklahoma City bombings, to mention just a few that could have been prevented by effective intelligence and the use of "eavesdropping."

The "old CIA" would have "advanced" an assassination of Osama bin Laden, as early as 1989. Osama bin Laden and his earliest cohorts, including men like al Zawahiri, Atef, and the "Blind Sheik" (Rahman) would have been enjoying their "72 virgins," courtesy of the CIA, long before the world had been subjected to bin Laden's "great flame."

Finally, when you watch a Senate intelligence committee "hearing," you are actually witnessing politicians attempting to make criminals of intelligence gatherers. You are also observing your elected representatives buying votes with the future dead bodies of Americans.

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.