A New History of the Church Committee

Yawns greeted the panel's formation, writes James Risen in his scintillating new book, because the country was "exhausted by Watergate." But its fiery revelations led to monumental reforms.

LOOKING BACK SOME 50 YEARS NOW, it’s hard to imagine how a Senate investigation into CIA assassination plots, coups d’etat, domestic spying, covert alliances with the Mafia and mind-control drug testing on countless unwitting Americans would draw little interest from the press and public.

But that’s the way it was in the winter of 1975, when the U.S. Sen…