The United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States. The commission was led by the Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller, and is sometimes referred to as the Rockefeller Commission.
The commission was created in response to a December 1974 report in The New York Times that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s. The commission issued a single report in 1975, touching upon certain CIA abuses including mail opening and surveillance of domestic dissident groups. It publicized Project MKULTRA, a CIA mind control study. It also studied issues relating to the John F. Kennedy assassination, specifically the head snap as seen in the Zapruder film (first shown on television in 1975), and the possible presence of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas, Texas.
A larger investigation, the Church Committee, was set up on 27 January 1975 by the U.S. Senate. The Nedzi Committee was created in the U.S. Congress on 19 February 1975. It was replaced by the Pike Committee five months later.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, president, commission, cia and/or activities:
“Why doesn’t the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The admission of the States of Wyoming and Idaho to the Union are events full of interest and congratulation, not only to the people of those States now happily endowed with a full participation in our privileges and responsibilities, but to all our people. Another belt of States stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“The loneliest feeling in the world is when you think you are leading the parade and turn to find that no one is following you. No president who badly misguesses public opinion will last very long.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
—Bible: New Testament John 8:32.
These words of Jesus are inscribed on the wall of the main lobby at the CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia.
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)