The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy by James Risen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book when I saw it on the library shelf, being old enough to remember Frank Church, definitely old enough to remember the multifaceted 1976 Democratic presidential primary battle, and also having read a lot of Risen's reporting in various outlets.

From the Prologue, I figured this would probably be a good four-star, but not a five-star.

First, I’ve long held, from what I’ve read, that the Pike Committee did more than the Church Committee. So said Mark Ames. Risen disagrees. I've read other material elsehwere to that effect.

That said, he doesn’t even mention the House Government Information Subcommittee of Bella Abzug. In fact, Risen doesn’t mention Abzug, period. James Bamford does mention her extensively in Puzzle Palace, calling it, vis-à-vis BOTH Church and Pike Comms, “like an ammunition-laden cargo plane out of control,” from the spooks point of view. Bamford of course talks about both full commissions.

Second, he, and he’s not alone, talk about the Church Committee “reining in” the intelligence state. Well, that was a low bar to hurdle and was also relatively temporary. And, the battle was halfway lost at the time and Church signed off on the final version of the Church Committee report, establishing the Intelligence Committee refused to require the CIA to give the Intell folks advance notice of covert operations. It also had other loopholes, and per that link, many staffers excoriated the committee. Oh, the vote was unanimous, so that includes Church. (The Senate Government Operations Committee, or more precisely, the Senate Committee on Government Operations, was the Church Committee. That said, as it had 11 members, I'm not sure where a 12-0 vote comes from, nor am I sure what the name of Charles Percy, who was never on the committee, is doing there.)  In other words, per his own committee staffers, at least metaphorically, he wasn't all that honest of a man.

The claims of Church and others that this would tread on the sacrosanct Constitutional separation of powers and involve one branch of the Trinity interfering with another was and is laughable. Congresses regularly set restrictions on presidential power, as do courts. In fact, just a couple of years prior, the Supreme Court ruled that Nixon's "impoundment" of Congressional appropriations was unconstitutional.

The real issue, as I see it, is that senators didn't really want to reign in the CIA that much, and didn't want to be called bad guys for allegedly putting handcuffs on the CIA. This, in fact, is a charge that Steve Symms raised against Church in his successful 1980 run to unseat him. Even beyond that, I think these, and most senators, wanted "plausible deniability" vis a vis the CIA.

So, with that, we've fallen out of the four-star range on just how much Church really did, as well as, metaphorically, just how honest he was or was not. And, with that, like one other three-star reviewer, I thought the title stood out like a sore thumb and was off-putting, whether Risen chose that, or his editor.

Beyond that, per "The Last Great Senate," there were other senators in 1980 who, overall, were in the same general range of honesty as Church. So, again, why the title?

Related to that? Yeah, Church may have in private been an early opponent of Vietnam, but for some time after voting for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, those concerns stayed private. As for the two who voted against LBJ? Ernest Gruening got lied out of the Senate in 1968 by Mike Gravel and his campaign (and lie Gravel did, about that and many other things) and Wayne Morse was the type of independent minded person beyond Church's idol, William Borah, let alone Church himself.  I mean, the vote split has even 10 "not voting" senators, nine of them Democrats. Church couldn't even do that.

And, why the subject? Yes, I know Risen is big in intelligence community reporting. But, per Ames' link, why not a bio of Pike?

With Church (and this would be far more true with Pike), I think Risen got his ass in a crack. There's not that much on which to hang one's hat for a Church bio other than the Church Committee. Well, then, in that case, don't make it a bio. Focus on the Church and Pike committees.

As for the 1976 campaign? I disagree with Risen's implication that Church likely would have won California had Brown not have made his late entry into the race. Mo Udall was the most union-favored remaining candidate at this point, and from the neighboring state of Arizona. Plus, Carter would have campaigned harder in California without Brown there, and without Brown having won Maryland, probably would have been in a position to win the nomination right there, without George Wallace and Scoop Jackson ceding their delegates.

One other error?

Page 243, the Sacheen Littlefeather who stood in for Marlon Brando at the 1972 Oscars is a pretendian, not an American Indian, and has been suspected long before Risen wrote. The NY Times even had a news story .

That said, ignore wingnut 3-star and lower reviews like this MAGAts one. Surprised she gave it 3 stars rather than lower.


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