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Early Career

Church was a third-generation Idahoan. As a junior at Boise High School he won the 1941 American Legion National Oratorical Contest, whose prize paid for four years at the college of the winner's choice. He enrolled at Stanford University in 1942.³ He enlisted in the United States Army in 1943 and served as a military intelligence officer in the China-Burma-India theater until his discharge in 1946, rising to the rank of Captain.⁴ He received his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1950 and practiced law in Boise.³

In 1956 Church won the Democratic primary and then defeated the Republican incumbent Herman Welker for the Senate. At 32 he became the fifth youngest member ever to sit in the Senate.⁵ At his own request he was assigned to the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. In 1958 he was appointed to the McClellan Committee and received national television exposure. In 1959 Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and in 1960 he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.⁶ He was re-elected in 1962 and 1968.⁷

Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin and Cooper-Church

On August 7, 1964, Church voted for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (H.J.Res. 1145), which the Senate passed 88 to 2. Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening cast the two dissenting votes.⁸⁹ Church later became a critic of the war. In a 1965 Senate floor speech he expressed concern about continued U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. His finding aid says that his stance was to the right of his Idaho constituency and carried political risk, and that afterward he was actively engaged in efforts to force the end of the war.¹⁰

In 1969 Church joined John Sherman Cooper, a Republican from Kentucky, to sponsor an amendment prohibiting the use of ground troops in Laos and Thailand.¹¹ On June 30, 1970, the Senate adopted the Cooper-Church Amendment by a 58 to 37 roll call, a measure that restricted further U.S. military operations in Cambodia.¹² Section 7 of the Special Foreign Assistance Act of 1971 (Public Law 91-652, signed January 5, 1971) provided that none of the funds authorized or appropriated under that or any other Act could be used to finance the introduction of United States ground combat troops into Cambodia or to provide United States advisers to or for Cambodian military forces in Cambodia.¹³ The finding aid describes the 1970 amendment as limiting presidential power in wartime.¹¹

The Multinational Corporations Subcommittee

In 1973 Church was appointed chairman of the Church Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, which he regarded as possibly his most important assignment.¹⁴ The subcommittee held hearings on ITT Corporation and Chile on March 20, 21 and 22, 1973. A CIA memorandum of March 26, 1973 to the Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division reviewed the transcripts. It listed William Merriam, who was in charge of ITT's Washington offices, and Edward Gerrity as the most evasive witnesses and John McCone as receiving the most deferential treatment from the subcommittee. The subcommittee dwelt on the approval William Broe gave to Merriam of recommendations from ITT's Latin America public relations staff, on what the memorandum called "the Broe plan" put to Gerrity for creating economic problems in Chile, and on Broe's discussion with Harold Geneen. McCone testified that ideas had been generated at CIA staff level that Director Richard Helms never approved, and said of Broe, "I think he was exploring." The memorandum recorded that the subcommittee staff was using Broe's written responses of March 20 to formulate questions for witnesses, including whether Geneen had discussed with Broe an offer of election funds to be channeled through the CIA.¹⁵

The Select Committee's staff report on covert action in Chile, Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973, was published in 1975. It stated that the CIA spent three million dollars in an effort to influence the 1964 Chilean presidential election, and eight million dollars covertly in the three years between 1970 and the September 1973 military coup, with over three million of it in fiscal year 1972.¹⁶

Hearings on Lockheed Aircraft Company before the subcommittee opened on February 4, 1976 (Part 14 of Multinational Corporations and United States Foreign Policy, covering February 4 and 6 and May 4, 1976).¹⁷ The New York Times reported that Lockheed payoffs in Japan, involving $12.6 million over twenty years and made to top officials of the government primarily through Yoshio Kodama, were first disclosed publicly at the subcommittee's February 4 hearings. Its reporter Ann Crittenden, citing a former CIA official and other sources, wrote that details of the bribery in connection with the sale of the F-104 to Japan in the late 1950s were reported to CIA headquarters from the Tokyo embassy; that Kodama had not been identified as a CIA agent but had a long-standing relationship with American embassy officials and, according to former CIA officials, received American funds for covert projects on several occasions; and that Mitchell Rogovin, special counsel to Director George H. W. Bush, said the agency had no records of any involvement with Lockheed.¹⁸ Jack Anderson and Les Whitten wrote on March 23, 1976 that CIA officials questioned behind closed doors by Church's subcommittee denied knowledge of the foreign payoffs, although the agency gave the subcommittee a biography of Kodama, and that, according to their sources, Lockheed representatives had taken part in CIA briefings at American embassies.¹⁹ Tad Szulc wrote in The New Republic that sources close to the investigation said the CIA may have orchestrated much of Lockheed's financial operations in Japan, and that most of Lockheed's payments from 1969 to 1975 were transmitted through a New York firm of currency dealers the CIA had reportedly often used, Deak and Company, which was founded after the Second World War by the Office of Strategic Services officer Nicholas Deak and which, according to Szulc's intelligence sources, kept close ties with senior CIA personnel.²⁰

The Select Committee, 1975 to 1976

The Senate adopted Senate Resolution 21 on January 27, 1975, creating the Select Committee and naming Church its chairman.¹ Its members were Church, John G. Tower as vice chairman, Phil Hart, Walter Mondale, Walter Huddleston, Robert Morgan, Gary Hart, Howard Baker, Barry Goldwater, Charles Mathias and Richard Schweiker, with Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr. as chief counsel.²¹ On December 22, 1974, Seymour Hersh had reported on the front page of the New York Times that the Times investigation had established that intelligence files on at least 10,000 American citizens were maintained by a special unit of the CIA reporting directly to Richard Helms, in what became known as Operation CHAOS; the committee was formed in the aftermath of that reporting.²² The committee ran through April 1976 and produced an interim report on assassination plots (S. Rept. 94-465, November 20, 1975), a six-book final report (S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, Books I to VI) and seven volumes of hearings.²³²¹

The interim report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, documented plots against Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba and discussed the Operation MONGOOSE program against Cuba.²³ It stated that the command and control structure "failed to provide a specific written order which, according to one CIA employee, would have ensured the destruction of certain toxins."²⁴

On September 16, 1975, the committee opened three days of hearings on the unauthorized storage of toxic agents, and took testimony from Nathan Gordon, a former chief of the chemistry branch of the Army's Technical Services.²⁵ The hearing examined a quantity of shellfish toxin (paralytic shellfish poison) that the CIA kept after President Richard Nixon's November 25, 1969, statement on chemical and biological warfare, and two sheets of paper dated February 18, 1970, found with the toxin.²⁵ Gordon testified that he had not received an order from the Director of Central Intelligence to search out and destroy the CIA's stock of biological agents. Counsel read back his earlier answer to the question of whether he would have searched the south laboratory had there been such an order: "Very likely, very likely. Yes; I would have been a darned fool if I did not."²⁶ Gordon said that he, his project officer and a technical consultant regarded the shellfish toxin as a chemical substance, "not a biological agent, not a biological toxin," when the offer to store the Agency stockpile of five grams was made to them in the latter part of February 1970. He also described a dart tranquilizer device for dogs that had been developed before he joined the branch, and the hearing took up a dart device for clandestine inoculation, which the staff called a "microbioinoculator."²⁷

The final report's second book, which covers the rights of Americans, reported that separate files were created on approximately 7,200 Americans and over 100 domestic groups during Operation CHAOS (1967-1973), and that about 300,000 individuals were indexed in a CIA computer system.²⁸ The report stated that CIA officials recognized that the CIA's examination of domestic groups violated the Agency's mandate, and that the CIA and the NSA illegally instituted programs for the interception of international communications to and from American citizens, primarily first class mail and cable traffic.²⁹ Operation CHAOS, the CIA's domestic surveillance program targeting antiwar organizations, was found to be unlawful.³⁰ The COINTELPRO program, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's campaign against political organizations, included programs resulting in the death of activists such as Fred Hampton.³¹

The committee found that the NSA obtained millions of private telegrams sent from, to or through the United States from 1947 to 1975 under a secret arrangement with three telegraph companies.²⁸ On October 29, 1975, the committee opened public hearings on the NSA; Tower began by saying that from the beginning he had opposed public hearings on NSA activities.³² On November 3 the committee had voted seven to three to make one NSA operation public, subject to confirmation by the Senate Parliamentarian. At the November 6 session Church read the statement into the record: SHAMROCK was the cover name for a program in which the government persuaded three international telegraph companies, RCA Global, ITT World Communications and Western Union International, to make certain of their international telegraph traffic available; for almost thirty years copies of most international telegrams originating in or forwarded through the United States were turned over to the National Security Agency and its predecessor agencies. Church said the program appeared to violate section 605 of the Communications Act of 1934 and the Fourth Amendment, and that it had been terminated.³³ MINARET was a watch-list program governed by a charter dated July 1, 1969.³⁴

The committee also documented HTLINGUAL, the CIA program that opened mail to and from the Soviet Union, intercepting letters of Americans unrelated to foreign intelligence or counterintelligence.³⁵ The committee's hearings on Internal Revenue Service activity and on mail opening were published as separate volumes.³⁶³⁷ The committee documented harassment of political opponents by the Internal Revenue Service.³⁶

Edward Korry, the former ambassador to Chile, began his public testimony before the committee: "I requested the CIA program in Chile. I planned much of the covert action in 1970."³⁸

Meet the Press and the Additional Views

On August 17, 1975, Church appeared on NBC's Meet the Press and said of the investigation: "Now, why is this investigation important? I'll tell you why: because I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."³⁹

In the Final Report, Book I, Church filed Additional Views on covert action. He wrote that the covert action capability of the intelligence community ought to be circumscribed more sharply than a majority of the committee was willing to recommend; that the CIA "filled its bag with dirty tricks, ranging from bribery and false propaganda to schemes to 'alter the health' of unfriendly foreign leaders and undermine their regimes"; and that "all covert activity unrelated to the gathering of essential intelligence should be severed entirely from the CIA," with any future secret operation in a foreign land done under the direct aegis of the State Department.⁴⁰

Presidential Campaign and Cuba

In the spring of 1976 Church sought the Democratic presidential nomination. He entered the primaries late and won in Nebraska, Idaho, Oregon and Montana, then withdrew in favor of Jimmy Carter, who was nominated.⁴¹

Church became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1979, a post he had long sought. He guided the ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty through the Senate.² His chairmanship coincided with the dispute over a Soviet combat brigade in Cuba. On September 5, 1979, as Senator Baker spoke on the Senate floor about the brigade and the SALT II treaty, Senator Robert Byrd said that the Foreign Relations Committee was at that moment holding an executive session at which Admiral Stansfield Turner, the Director of Central Intelligence, was making a presentation.⁴² Before Carter's televised address on the brigade in early October 1979, Church met the president for a half-hour briefing and said that he thought the SALT II treaty could be salvaged and that he was looking for a way to do it.⁴³

Defeat and Death

Church's support for the treaties was used by his political opponents. In 1980 he lost his bid for a fifth term to Republican Steve Symms by 4,262 votes, less than 1 percent of the turnout.⁴⁴ The defeat was partly characterized as a backlash against his intelligence committee work.³⁰ The National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), led by Terry Dolan, spent heavily against him. Federal Election Commission Schedule E records for candidate S4ID00026 in the 1980 two-year period list 842 independent expenditure line items. Of these, 798 were filed by NCPAC (committee C00024687) as independent expenditures against Church, dated from May 30, 1979 to May 1981, with line amounts summing to $305,228 ($95,299 dated 1979, $209,221 dated 1980 and $708 dated 1981). The other filers on the same candidate were Americans for Life, Positive Action Today, the Committee for Positive Change and the Idaho Pro-Life PAC (all against) and the Idaho Voters Association and Idaho Families for Church (for).⁴⁵ A review of Jim Heffernan's book on the 1980 Senate races states that NCPAC's ads focused on the SALT II and Panama Canal treaties.⁴⁶

After leaving the Senate, Church practiced international law with the Washington, D.C., firm of Whitman and Ransom, specializing in Asian issues.⁴⁷ His papers are held by Boise State University.⁴⁸

In 1984 Church was hospitalized for a pancreatic tumor. He died of pancreatic cancer at home in Bethesda, Maryland, on April 7, 1984, at the age of 59.⁴⁹

Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, Book II, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, letter of transmittal, citing Senate Resolution 21, January 27, 1975. https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel02unit ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Boise State University Special Collections, Biographical Note (1973 subcommittee chairmanship, 1979 Foreign Relations chairmanship, Panama Canal Treaties). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (1941 American Legion oratorical contest, enrollment at Stanford in 1942, Stanford Law School degree in 1950). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (1943 enlistment, military intelligence officer in the China-Burma-India theater, discharge in 1946). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (1956 Senate primary and defeat of Herman Welker, "fifth youngest member ever to sit in the U.S. Senate"). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (Interior and Insular Affairs assignment, 1958 McClellan Committee appointment, 1959 appointment to the Foreign Relations Committee by Lyndon B. Johnson, 1960 keynote address). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (1962 and 1968 re-elections). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Congressional Record, Senate, August 7, 1964, pp. 18470-71, roll call on H.J.Res. 1145 ("The result was announced, yeas 88, nays 2"; Church among the yeas; Gruening and Morse the nays). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1964-pt14/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1964-pt14-4-1.pdf ↩︎
H.J.Res. 1145, 88th Congress, Public Law 88-408, approved August 10, 1964. https://www.congress.gov/bill/88th-congress/house-joint-resolution/1145/text ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (1965 Senate floor speech on Vietnam, constituency and political risk, later efforts to force an end to the war). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (1969 amendment with John Sherman Cooper barring ground troops in Laos and Thailand, 1970 second Cooper-Church Amendment limiting presidential power in wartime). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
"Cooper-Church rider wins Senate approval," State News (Michigan State University), July 1, 1970, reporting the Associated Press roll call of 58 to 37 on the Cooper-Church amendment. https://sanweb.lib.msu.edu/DMC/state_news/1970/state_news_19700701.pdf ↩︎
Special Foreign Assistance Act of 1971, Public Law 91-652, 84 Stat. 1942 (approved January 5, 1971), sec. 7(a) and (b). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-84/pdf/STATUTE-84-Pg1942.pdf ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (1973 appointment as chairman of the Subcommittee on Multi-National Corporations, which Church felt "may have been his single most important assignment"). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
CIA, Memorandum for Chief, Western Hemisphere Division, "Text of Senate ITT Hearings: 20, 21 and 22 March 1973," March 26, 1973, CIA Reading Room document 0005492976. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0005492976 ↩︎
Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973, Staff Report, 1975, Part I, A. Overview. https://archive.org/details/Covert-Action-In-Chile-1963-1973 ↩︎
U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, Multinational Corporations and United States Foreign Policy, Hearings, 94th Congress, 2d Session, on Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Part 14, February 4 and 6 and May 4, 1976 (Government Printing Office, 1976), catalog entry. https://search.law.villanova.edu/Record/234018 ↩︎
Ann Crittenden, "C.I.A. Said to Have Known in '50's of Lockheed Bribes," New York Times, April 1976, stating that public disclosure of the payoffs "did not come until last Feb. 4 in hearings of the Senate subcommittee on multinational corporations" (CIA Reading Room copy, CIA-RDP88-01315R000300470055-1). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01315r000300470055-1 ↩︎
Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, "The Washington Merry-Go-Round," March 23, 1976 (CIA Reading Room copy, "CIA Knew of Multinationals' Payoffs," CIA-RDP88-01315R000300450031-9). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01315r000300450031-9 ↩︎
William Shawcross, "Did CIA back Lockheed bribes to Japanese?," The Observer, April 1976, summarizing Tad Szulc in The New Republic (CIA Reading Room copy, CIA-RDP88-01315R000300470050-6). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01315r000300470050-6 ↩︎
Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, Book I, Foreign and Military Intelligence, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, title page and membership list. https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel01unit ↩︎
Seymour M. Hersh, "Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years," New York Times, December 22, 1974, p. 1, https://www.nytimes.com/1974/12/22/archives/huge-cia-operation-reported-in-u-s-against-antiwar-forces-other.html ; quoted and summarized in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXXVIII, part 2, Document 17, Editorial Note. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v38p2/d17 ↩︎
Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim Report, S. Rept. 94-465, November 20, 1975, including Part VI on the MONGOOSE program. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎
Interim Report, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 334, n. 1, citing "Gordon, 9/16/75, pp. 166-67." In the printed hearing volume (Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents, Vol. 1) Gordon's September 16 testimony runs from p. 51 to p. 63 and the no-order exchange is at pp. 56-57; pp. 166-67 carry the September 18 testimony of Senseney. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎
Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents, Hearings, Vol. 1, September 16, 17 and 18, 1975, Tuesday, September 16, 1975 session, opening statements and exhibit list (exhibit No. 3, p. 198, and exhibit No. 4, p. 200). https://archive.org/details/Church-Committee-Hearings-Volume1-Toxic-Agents ↩︎
Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents, Hearings, Vol. 1, testimony of Nathan Gordon, pp. 56-58 (exchange on an order to search out and destroy the CIA's stocks of biological agents and the answer read back from the afternoon session, p. 56; statement on the shellfish toxin as a chemical substance, p. 58). https://archive.org/details/Church-Committee-Hearings-Volume1-Toxic-Agents ↩︎
Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents, Hearings, Vol. 1, testimony of Nathan Gordon, p. 63 (dart tranquilizer for dogs), and staff statement on the microbioinoculator, "a dart device for clandestine and imperceptible inoculation." https://archive.org/details/Church-Committee-Hearings-Volume1-Toxic-Agents ↩︎
Final Report, Book II, S. Rept. 94-755, Summary (pp. 4-7, statistics on CHAOS and the NSA telegram program) and the Operation CHAOS section (p. 99 ff.; p. 102: 13,000 files, more than 7,200 on American citizens, names of more than 300,000 persons and groups). https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel02unit ↩︎
Final Report, Book II, S. Rept. 94-755, p. 101 (CIA officials recognized that examination of domestic groups "violated the Agency's mandate") and p. 40 ("The CIA and the National Security Agency illegally instituted programs for the interception of international communications to and from American citizens"). https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel02unit ↩︎
Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976. Olmsted, Kathryn S. Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI. University of North Carolina Press, 1996. ↩︎
Final Report, Book III, S. Rept. 94-755, COINTELPRO chapters, including the Chicago "Black Nationalist" section that discusses Fred Hampton. https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel03unit ↩︎
Electronic Surveillance Within the United States for Foreign Intelligence Purposes, Hearings, Vol. 5, The National Security Agency and Fourth Amendment Rights, October 29 and November 6, 1975, October 29 session, opening statements of Church and Tower. https://archive.org/details/Church-Committee-Hearings-Volume5-National-Security-Agency ↩︎
Hearings, Vol. 5, Thursday, November 6, 1975, chairman's opening remarks and the SHAMROCK statement, pp. 57-58. https://archive.org/details/Church-Committee-Hearings-Volume5-National-Security-Agency ↩︎
Final Report, Book II, S. Rept. 94-755, p. 105 n. (NSA MINARET Charter, 7/1/69). https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel02unit ↩︎
Final Report, Book II, S. Rept. 94-755, p. 59 (the CIA "opened mail to and from the Soviet Union largely at random, intercepting letters of Americans unrelated to foreign intelligence or counterintelligence"). https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel02unit ↩︎
Internal Revenue Service, Church Committee Hearings, Vol. 3, 1975. https://archive.org/details/Church-Committee-Hearings-Volume3-IRS ↩︎
Mail Opening, Church Committee Hearings, Vol. 4, 1975. https://archive.org/details/Church-Committee-Hearings-Volume4-Mail-Opening ↩︎
Senate Select Committee, Covert Action, Hearings, Vol. 7, testimony of Edward M. Korry, former U.S. Ambassador to Chile (opening statement). https://archive.org/details/Church-Committee-Hearings-Volume7-Covert-Action ↩︎
Frank Church, NBC Meet the Press, August 17, 1975, as quoted in "Frank Church and the Church Committee," Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy, Wayne State University Law School (Wayback copy), https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://www.carllevincenter.org/frank-church-and-the-church-committee/ ; the sentence beginning "I know the capacity" is also quoted from the broadcast in Tim Weiner, Times-News, reprinted by the Boise State University Frank Church Institute, March 30, 2015. https://boisestate.edu/sps-frankchurchinstitute/?p=6542; Associated Press, "Church: Technology Could Perpetuate Tyranny, Total U.S. Control Said Possible," Post-Bulletin (Rochester, Minn.), August 18, 1975, p. 21 (Church "said Sunday on NBC's 'Meet the Press'"), https://www.newspapers.com/image/1132361475/ ↩︎
Final Report, Book I, S. Rept. 94-755, "Additional Views of Senator Frank Church Concerning Covert Action," pp. 563-565. https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel01unit ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (spring 1976 candidacy, primaries in Nebraska, Idaho, Oregon and Montana, withdrawal in favor of Carter) and the Campaign 1976 (President) subseries. https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Congressional Record, Senate, September 5, 1979, remarks of Senators Baker and Robert C. Byrd on the Soviet brigade in Cuba and SALT II. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1979-pt18/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1979-pt18-1-1.pdf ↩︎
"Church said he thought SALT II could be salvaged," State News (Michigan State University), October 2, 1979, news report on Church's briefing with Carter before the president's address on the Soviet brigade in Cuba. https://sanweb.lib.msu.edu/DMC/state_news/1979/state_news_19791002.pdf ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (1980 defeat by Steve Symms by 4,262 votes, less than 1 percent of turnout) and the Campaign 1980 (Senate) subseries. https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Federal Election Commission, OpenFEC API, Schedule E independent expenditures, candidate_id S4ID00026 (CHURCH, FRANK, Senate, Idaho), two_year_transaction_period 1980, queried October 14, 2026 with the API's keyset pagination (842 line items; committee C00024687 accounts for 798, each filed on an amended F3X report; amounts summed by expenditure_date year). https://api.open.fec.gov/v1/schedules/schedule_e/?candidate_id=S4ID00026&two_year_transaction_period=1980 ↩︎
Jim Heffernan, Tuesday Night Massacre: Four Senate Elections and the Radicalization of the Republican Party, account of NCPAC's 1980 campaign against Church, reviewed at https://tillamookcountypioneer.net/book-review-tuesday-night-massacre-four-senate-elections-and-the-radicalization-of-the-republican-party ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (post-Senate practice with Whitman and Ransom, Washington, D.C., specializing in Asian issues). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Boise State University Special Collections, Content Description and Administrative Information (papers relating chiefly to Church's Senate career, 1956-1980). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎
Frank Church Papers, MSS 056, Biographical Note (1984 hospitalization for a pancreatic tumor, death at home in Bethesda, Maryland, April 7, 1984, age 59). https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv50912 ↩︎

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