Paul Simon used to sing of “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” Slip out the back. Make a new plan. Hop on a bus or drop off the key. Presumably, there are 46 more distinct ways to leave your lover. Last Friday, Cuba lost an iconic leader. The United States lost its geographically closest, longest nemesis Fidel Castro. In the wake of Castro’s passing, facts and fictions, myths and legends, of the Central Intelligence Agency’s attempts to assassinate the Cuban leader were resurrected. Media outlets were quick to report a range of bizarre ways the CIA, without success and some embarrassment, went after Castro. The most official, reliable report, however, was published in April 1976. It is called The Church Report, and it’s about a lot more than Fidel Castro.

SEYMOUR HERSH

After Woodward and Bernstein, there was Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh. Just a year after the Watergate Commissioned concluded that the Nixon Administration had misused United States intelligence assets for domestic purposes—and a few days before Christmas ’75—the New York Times gave Hersh front page headlines: “Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years.”

According to Hersh, “The Central Intelligence Agency, directly violating its charter, conducted a massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation during the Nixon Administration against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups in the United States, according to well‐placed Government sources.” The Hersh story, so soon after conclusions of the Watergate Commission, prompted broad, bi-partisan congressional action. In January, the Senate passed 82-4 Senate Resolution 21 “to conduct an investigation and study of governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities.” Over the course of the next year and a half, the select committee would dig deep into the intelligence community.

THE CHURCH REPORT

The Church Report, named for the committee chairman Senator Frank Church, was the product of some 16 months of investigation, study, testimony, and debate held mostly in closed sessions because of the secretive nature of the topics and many witnesses. Altogether, the Committee conducted over 120 meetings and interviewed nearly 1000 witnesses. The broad finding of the Church Report that, according to the United States Senate’s own description, “beginning with President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and continuing through the early 1970s, ‘intelligence excesses, at home and abroad,’ were not the ‘product of any single party, administration, or man,’ but had developed as America rose to a become a superpower during a global Cold War.” In other words, over the course of several decades when the country was on full security alert and felt most threatened, our government’s intelligence agencies’ mission creep had gone unchecked across administrations, and it was time to reign them in.

CHECKS AND BALANCES

The report identified nearly 100 ways the government should move intelligence activities back under a constitutional umbrella. And from the Church Report was born by legislation the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The committees mission, in part, is to “’provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.’”

Oh, and according to the Church Report, “’We have found concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965 . . . . The proposed assassination devices ran the gamut from high-powered rifles to poison pills, poison pens, deadly bacterial powders and other devices which strain the imagination.’”

You can read all about it on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence site. Apparently, there are about 8 ways to assassinate your nemesis. But none that worked.

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Ed Ledford enjoys the most challenging, complex, and high stakes communications requirements. His portfolio includes everything from policy and strategy to poetry. A native of Asheville, N.C., and retired Army Aviator, Ed’s currently writing speeches in D.C. and working other writing projects from his office in Rockville, MD. He loves baseball and enjoys hiking, camping, and exploring anything. Follow Ed on Twitter @ECLedford.