Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author James Risen says he always wanted to look back and do a book about Frank Church. That book chronicles the political minefield the late Senator Church navigated via what would be known as “The Church Committee.”
But it was a particular incident in 1956 during Church’s first run for the U.S. Senate that inspired Risen to call Church, “The Last Honest Man.”
“He was running against a Republican incumbent who was really kind of a vile man. His name was Herman Welker. And he had been part of a scheme to blackmail another senator, to force this other senator to resign because his son had been arrested for homosexual solicitation and he blackmailed Welker, blackmailed this other senator, and then the senator committed suicide. It's the real-life basis for the movie Advise and Consent. And when Church ran against Welker, his staff put together pamphlets that were … it was going to lay out the story of Welker's blackmailing of this other senator and Church when he saw it … he refused to put out the pamphlet and he ordered them all to be burned in a bonfire behind his campaign office in Boise. And he said he told his staff, ‘I want to win on the issues. I don't want to win through this dirty campaigning.’ And I always thought that that was impressive, really a moment when he had to decide, ‘What kind of politician am I going to be?’ And he chose, I think, the right path."
Risen, who will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Frank Church Institute Conference, joined Frank Church Institute Board Member Todd Achilles to visit with Morning Edition host George Prentice to preview the conference and talk about the 21st century relevance of Church’s legacy.
“Sometimes that tension isn't there when it should be, and sometimes there's too much of it. And finding that balance…well, it makes for a good day of discussion.”Todd Achilles
Read the full transcript below:
GEORGE PRENTICE: It's Morning Edition. Good morning. I'm George Prentice. It is difficult to adequately amplify how Frank Church upended Washington with his committee's investigations into our government's intelligence apparatus. It is the centerpiece of the best seller, The Last Honest Man, the CIA, FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys, and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy. And it is from Pulitzer Prize winning author James Risen….the keynote at the upcoming Frank Church Institute conference. It is set for October 19th. Mr. Risen joins us. Mr. Risen, good morning.
JAMES RISEN: Hi, how are you?
PRENTICE: I'm well, sir. Thank you so much for joining us from the D.C. area. And Todd Achilles is here… working here in Idaho at the intersection of tech, business and public policy. He is a board member at the Frank Church Institute. Mr. Achilles, good morning.
TODD ACHILLES: Good morning, George. Thank you.
PRENTICE: Mr. Risen, my guess is you probably know this, but what puts me back on my heels each year is how many students, high school and college students from across the region fill the room at the Frank Church Conference. Students who were nowhere near born before Frank Church's passing to them. He may be a name on a plaque or a bronze sculpture. You get their attention when you call Frank Church, The Last Honest Man. But what can you tell a student about how Frank Church changed America?
RISEN: I think I think that's really great that so many young people are drawn to his story because and I think there's an element of what's happened since he died that is fascinating. As you know, he died of cancer in 1984. He was, I think it's fair to say, his he was largely forgotten for the first 10 or 15 years after his death. But it was really 9/11 and the Bush administration's response to nine divided by 11 that really revived his memory. And it was, ironically, Dick Cheney, who had been his nemesis in the 1970s and who had fought against the church committee's investigations of the CIA when he was vice president, he tried to blame Frank Church and the Church Committee for all of the problems that the intelligence community had for failing to detect nine divided by 11 and after the war in Iraq started going badly and the war in Afghanistan started going badly, people began to turn against Dick Cheney, and they began to say, well, if Dick Cheney doesn't like Frank Church, maybe there's something good about him. And so today, I think ironically, thanks to Dick Cheney, Frank Church is remembered much more than he was prior to that.
PRENTICE: Todd Achilles, how does Frank Church's legacy inform your citizenship?
ACHILLES: You know, I think one of the guiding principles for the senator was just trust and faith in our democratic institutions. And I think this is what I really enjoy about Jim's book, is he highlights how the senator used that, you know, that really important function of Congress, the oversight function to expose corruption and bad practices within the different agencies in order to re-instill the public's faith in government.
PRENTICE: Mr. Risen, can you speak to Frank Church's clarity and focus? I think a journalist, a fine journalist, knows to keep digging, especially when it gets dangerous. I don't think that's necessarily muscle memory for a politician. But Frank Church did keep digging at the peril of his political career.
RISEN: Yeah, he had a fascinating journey as a senator. He was one of the youngest people ever elected to the Senate when he was elected in 1956. He was only 32. And in the first few years in the Senate in the late 1950s, he was a fairly traditional Democratic, conventional Cold War Democrat who was kind of anti-communist. And he was a lot like John Kennedy, who was his close friend. But then when the Vietnam War began, and he really was one of the first political leaders in America to turn against the war and Vietnam really transformed him into a radical. He became convinced that the United States was being transformed into a militaristic empire and that he had to stop it. And he believed that the intelligence community and the CIA in particular, was at the heart of this transformation into a militaristic empire from being a republic. And he wanted to rein in its power. And so he came to the Church Committee and its investigation of the CIA with that belief that what he was trying to do was to save the American Republic.
PRENTICE: And yet his ultimate political career did suffer because of that.
RISEN: At first, the Church Committee's investigation came right after Watergate. And so it was very popular. It was seen as kind of Watergate 2.0. But then towards the end of the investigation, a CIA officer stationed in Athens was assassinated by Greek terrorists in the Ford administration, which was in office at that time, lied to the public and said that it was the fault of the church committee, which was not true. And that really hurt the popularity of the church committee's work at the very end. And one of the things I do in the book is to reveal the truth about that assassination and what really happened and prove that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the Church “committee.
PRENTICE: Mr. Risen, can you share with us that aha moment of saying, Yeah, this book has to be titled The Last Honest Man?”
RISEN: I covered the CIA for the New York Times for many years. I covered it at the time of nine divided by 11. And as I said earlier, you know, Dick Cheney started blaming the Church Committee, which had been in worked, you know, 30 years earlier for the problems of the intelligence community. And it was obviously not true. But I always wanted to look back and do a book about Frank Church and the Church committee after that. And the thing that really struck me, the one incident in his life that I found amazing, came in his first Senate campaign in 1956. He was running against a Republican incumbent who was really kind of a vile man. His name was Herman Welker. And he had been part of a scheme to blackmail another senator, to force this other senator to resign because his son had been arrested for homosexual solicitation and he blackmailed Welker, blackmailed this other senator, and then the senator committed suicide. It's the real life basis for the movie Advise and Consent. And when Church ran against Welker, his staff put together pamphlets that were… it was going to lay out the story of Welker's blackmailing of this other senator and church when he saw it. He refused to put out the pamphlet and he ordered them all to be burned in a bonfire behind his campaign office in Boise. And he said he told his staff, “I want to win on the issues. I don't want to win through this dirty campaigning.” And I always thought that that was an impressive, really a moment when he had to decide ”What kind of politician am I going to be?” And he chose, I think, the right path.
PRENTICE: Mr. Achilles, I'd be remiss if I did not note that the title for this year's conference is Securing America's Future Rebuilding Trust in Turbulent Times. You navigate that in the. Business and the world of policy. I think it's one thing to talk about rebuilding trust, what works in 2023 as far as how do we rebuild trust?
ACHILLES: It's a really important discussion, George, And that's why we've centered the conference on this. You know, we've got events all over Idaho when Jim is in the state here, starting on Tuesday, October 17th at the community library in Ketchum, and then on Wednesday the 18th, we've got a conversation at the Egyptian in Boise and then the conference really where we get into this is on the 19th at Boise State. And in addition to Jim, we've got a a 34-year CIA counterterrorism analyst and Gina Bennett, she's going to keynote. And the intent there, George, is to really look at trust from the other side of the table. You’ve got the legacy of oversight of the CIA from the church committee. And what did that mean to professionals in the CIA that were working on counterterrorism issues? So I think that keynote from Gina is going to be really interesting to talk about that. And how did they think about their constitutional responsibilities as CIA analysts? We've got other panels looking at trust from the perspective of the media, looking at from perspectives of the judiciary. And then finally, our last event is on Friday in Pocatello at Idaho State. There's a panel led by the Student International Affairs Council that that Jim is going to be speaking on with with several ISU professors.
PRENTICE: And Mr. Achilles, can you speak to… I'm always taken aback by the energy in the room at the conference when I see so many students.
ACHILLES: Agreed and, you know, the Senator Church's wife, Bethune, you know, she told everybody 39 years ago that these conferences are always going to be free and open to the public. And it's a great opportunity. We've got lots of students from Boise area high schools, students from Boise State attending. And it's just a great opportunity to dig into these foundational issues about how do we govern ourselves and what's the right amount of oversight and responsibility and engagement between the different branches of government. And these are it's it's intent. You know, the founders intended this to be to have tension between the branches, to sort of keep everybody operating in the way they should. Sometimes that tension isn't there when it should be and sometimes there's too much of it. And finding that balance is, well, it makes for a good day of discussion.
PRENTICE: Todd Achilles is a board member at the Frank Church Institute, and the Pulitzer Prize winning James Risen is the author of the best seller The Last Honest Man. And Mr. Risen, safe journey back here to Idaho. It looks as if… it sounds as if you're going to be a very busy man. They're going to have you all over the Gem State. But for now, thank you so very much, gentlemen, for giving me some time.
RISEN: Thank you very much.
ACHILLES: Thank you, George.
Find reporter George Prentice on X @georgepren
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