Editing Richard Helms (section)

===Year of intelligence===
[[File:Otis G Pike.jpg|thumb|150px|Rep. [[Otis Pike]]]]

During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a dramatic, fundamental shift in American society generally, which profoundly affected public political behavior. Elected officials were compelled to confront new constituents with new attitudes. In particular, for the Central Intelligence Agency, the societal change altered notions of what was considered 'politically acceptable conduct'.<ref>Cf., Ranelagh (1986) pp. 530–531. The Watergate scandal focused the new attitudes on the accountability of elected government, including oversight of the CIA.</ref> In the early cold war period, the Agency had been somewhat exempt from normal standards of accountability, so that it could employ its special espionage and covert capacities against what was understood as an amoral communist enemy. At times during this period, the CIA operated under a cloak of secrecy, where it met the ideological foe in a gray-and-black world. In that era, normal congressional oversight was informally modified to block unwanted public scrutiny, which might be useful to the enemy.<ref>The congressional seniority system then functioned more effectively, which allowed the committee chair wide discretion. Cf., Colby (1978) p. 309.</ref><ref>Marchetti and Marks (1974, 1980) pp. 90–92.</ref>

[[File:Sam Ervin.jpg|thumb|150px|left|Senator [[Sam Ervin]], ''Watergate'' chairman.]]
An immediate cause of the surge in congressional oversight activity may be sourced in the American people's loss of confidence in the USG due to the Watergate scandal. Also, the apparent distortions and dishonesty concerning the reported progress of the war in Vietnam gravely eroded the public's previous tendency to put its trust in the word of USG officials. Evidence published in 1971 had demonstrated "systemized abuse of power" by [[J. Edgar Hoover]], the FBI director.<ref>Betty Medsger, ''The Burglary. The discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's secret FBI'' (New York: Knopf 2014). The initial published evidence of Hoover's illegality was obtained by unknown informants who burglarized an FBI office in Media, PA. Book review by James Rosen in the ''Wall Street Journal'', January 31, 2014, p. A11.</ref> The September 1973 overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile ultimately revealed earlier CIA involvement there.<ref>See above, section "Chile: Allende".</ref> Other factors contributed to the political unease, e.g., the prevalence of conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination, and the emergence of whistleblowers. Accordingly, the Central Intelligence Agency, which was tangentially involved in Watergate,<ref>See above, section under Nixon presidency, "RN: Watergate".</ref> and which had been directly engaged in the Vietnam War from the beginning,<ref>See above, sections under Johnson presidency.</ref> became a subject of congressional inquiry and media interest. Helms, of course, had served as head of the CIA, 1965–73. Eventually the process of scrutiny opened a pandora's box of questionable CIA secret activities.<ref>Ranelagh (1986) on the media and official investigations, pp. 571–577, 584–599; re whistleblowers, esp. [[Victor Marchetti]], pp. 536–538; CIA dissenters, e.g., [[Philip Agee]], pp. 471–472.</ref>

First, the Senate, in order to investigate charges of [[Watergate scandal|political malfeasance in the 1972 presidential election]],<ref>See above, section "RN: Watergate".</ref> had created the select [[Watergate Committee]], chaired by Senator Sam Ervin. Later, independent press discovery of the CIA's domestic spying, ([[Operation Chaos]]), created national headlines.<ref>See above, section "Domestic ''Chaos''".</ref> Thereafter, a long list of questionable CIA activities surfaced which caught the public's attention, and were nicknamed the [[Family jewels (Central Intelligence Agency)|family jewels]]. Both the Senate, (January 1975), and the House, (February 1975), created select committees to investigate intelligence matters. Senator [[Frank Church]] headed one, and Representative [[Otis Pike]] headed the other. In an effort to head off such inquiries, President Gerald Ford had created a Commission chaired by Vice President [[Nelson Rockefeller]], whose seminal interest was the CIA's recent foray into collecting intelligence on Americans.<ref>Helms (2003) pp. 426–430, 432.</ref><ref>Powers (1979) p. 337.</ref><ref>Turner (2005) 147–148.</ref> 1975 would become known as the "Year of Intelligence".<ref>Prados (2009) 295–296.</ref>