Church Committee Hearings - Tom Charles Huston Footage

Church Committee Hearings - Tom Charles Huston
This clip is not available for streaming at this time. Please contact WPA.	Tape Master:	3657
	Catalog #:	459742
	Clip Number:	459742-1
	Orginal Film:
	Timecode:
	Location:	Senate Caucus Room
	Year Shot:	1975 (Actual Year)
	Audio:	Yes
	Color:	Yes
	Headings:	GOVERNMENT: Hearings, Church Committee
	Description:	(00:15:33) Opens to TOM CHARLES HUSTON in the midst of a response to a question of Senator CHARLES MATHIAS, Huston says that he believes executive privilidge has stealthfully grown step by step into a monster over the past thirty years and that suddenly we've woken up to that reality and are now attacking it (00:16:45) Senator CHARLES MATHIAS' questions elicit a long response from Huston who says that had the intelligence agencies not been investigated/exposed for their improper intelligence operations things would have gone too far, Huston says that when he pushed the Huston plan he did so with the assumption that the agency members would tactfully use the new powers granted them, he did not realize they would be subject to abuse, Huston says future intelligence agency guidelines need to ensure that the public's constitutional rights remain respected (00:19:28) Committee Chairman FRANK CHURCH says that the whole purpose of the Constitution was not to entrust government with the power or judgement to decide to invade the privacy of an individual, but rather to protect individual rights from this sort of infringement, Church goes on to summarize executive hearing testimony where Counsel F.A.O. SCHWARZ confirmed that no one during the formulation or approval of the Huston Plan expressed any concern over its unconstitutionality or illegality - Huston confirms this after briefly arguing that aspects of the plan were felt by intelligence agency members not to be definitively unconstitutional (00:23:32) Church recognizes Senator SCHWIEKER (?), Schwieker pushes the case that the Huston plan's recall was not the end of the White House's push to step up intelligence operations - Huston responds in agreement, but saying that he left the White House shortly after the recall of the Huston Plan - Huston and Schwieker talk a bit about the creation of IEC by the White House, which worked within the Justice Department as an inter-intelligence agency group (00:27:30) Schwieker and Huston discuss the use of classification of operations and documents as top secret to prevent other members of government and the public from knowing about and thus cracking down on illegal activities (00:29:50) Scwieker reads the fourth ammendment and asks Huston what part of the Constitution he can site in the Huston plan's defense that would over ride this ammendment - Huston responds that he cannot do this, that he no longer feels the Huston plan to be constitutional, he says though, that in 1970, the general feeling was that there was a reasonable cause for intelligence gathering operations - Schwieker adds that he thinks the White House knew the Huston plan walked all over the Constitution and for this reason had Huston be the name affiliated with the plan, so that were it to come to legal contestation they could use "plausible denial" to escape responsibility (00:33:06) Church quotes more of Huston's executive session testimony in which Huston says that the problem with the Huston plan was that though it was concerned with the preservation of the national security it could also be abused for political purposes where one goes from investigating "the kid with the bomb, to the kid with the picket sign, to the kid with bumper sticker for the opposing candidate" and ends up with a Watergate situation, Church goes on to say how responsibility for these operations are obscured by bureacratic compartmentalization in which no one can be implicated fully in having broken the law, Church says this needs to change and that the mission of the senate hearings is to develop a system of accountability where these agencies report not only to the White House but to Congress as well (00:39:49) Church recognizes Senator WALTER MONDALE, Mondale wants to know what Huston found lacking from criminal law that the Huston Plan would have called for the extra-legal activities it did - Huston responds that the Huston Plan was more concerned with intelligence gathering than criminal prosecution, but that criminal law has nothing lacking from it - Mondale says he wants people to rest assured that our current criminal law system has enough power and freedom of operation to secure the peace from domestic violence (00:45:24) Mondale and Huston discuss the abuse of illegal intelligence gathering tactics for political purposes rather than dealing with national security threats, in particular they talk about the operations of the plumbers (00:47:18) Church recognizes Senator WALTER HUDDLESTON, Huddleston asks Huston what he knows about the White House receiving intelligence information from the IRS about political organizations - Huston reponds he had no hand in this information exchange and he speculates that it came indirectly from the IRS through the FBI - Huddleston then gives a short speech in which he says that the IRS passage of information is typical of all the intelligence agency operations the Senate Committee is investigating where top officials deny requesting improper activities and lower rank employees respond that they were just carrying out orders and everyone escapes full accountability (00:51:33) Church adjourns committee (00:52:08) Hearings host JIM LEHRER voices over summary of the day's testimony (00:53:01) Co-host PAUL DUKE stands on hearing room floor where he is about to conduct an interview with Senator Schwieker but is cut off by switch in footage (00:53:41) Opens different day of hearings, Lehrer and panel member DAVID WEISS in broad cast setup out side hearing room, they comment now on the testimony of CIA director WILLIAM COLBY (00:55:10) Duke interviews Senator Mathias about the first day of the hearings, the interview is cut off by the tape's end