Senate Foreign Relations Committee

The Senate established the Committee on Foreign Relations in 1816 as one of its original ten standing committees; it considers treaties and all diplomatic nominations.¹ Frank Church chaired it from 1979 to 1981.²

Hearings

On January 6, 1961, Secretary of State Christian A. Herter gave his farewell briefing to a closed session of the committee and spoke of a "disturbing" new element in the Middle East, the reactor at Dimona.³ At his confirmation hearing of 1966 as assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, Lincoln Gordon testified that "Neither the American Embassy nor I personally played any part" in the 1964 coup in Brazil.⁴ The committee held hearings on the American Institute for Free Labor Development on August 1, 1969.⁵ On February 7 and March 6, 1973, Richard Helms, newly ambassador to Iran, testified to it about Chile and ITT, stating under oath that the CIA had not "tried to overthrow the government of Chile" and had not "passed money to the opponents of Allende"; in 1977 he pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor counts of misleading Congress.⁶¹³ At the hearing of July 26, 1983, on Thomas F. Ellis, nominated to the Board for International Broadcasting, Senators Paul Tsongas and Joseph Biden questioned him about his service on the board of the Pioneer Fund; he withdrew.⁷ It confirmed Donald Gregg's ambassadorial nomination in June 1989 after hearings in which Kerry pressed him on what he had known of Contra operations.¹⁰

The Kerry Subcommittee

The Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations under John Kerry, with Jack Blum as special counsel, took testimony in 1987 and 1988 from traffickers, pilots and officials, among them Ramon Milian Rodriguez and, in February 1988, José Blandón.⁸ Its report of December 1988, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, stated: "The Subcommittee did not find that the Contra leaders personally were involved in drug trafficking. There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region." It found that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contra's funding problems," citing Oliver North's suggestion to the DEA in June 1985 that 1.5 million dollars from Barry Seal's sting be given to the Contras, and that "the State Department selected four companies owned and operated by narcotics traffickers to supply humanitarian assistance to the Contras," among them SETCO Air, set up by Ramón Matta Ballesteros, and DIACSA.⁹ The subcommittee's investigation of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International led to The BCCI Affair, the report of Kerry and Senator Hank Brown of December 1992.¹¹

In 1992 a subcommittee of the committee investigated the October Surprise allegations and found that William J. Casey had made "potentially dangerous" unauthorized efforts to collect intelligence on the Carter administration's negotiations for the release of the hostages in Iran, without finding a deal.¹²