Frank Church

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Frank Forrester Church III (July 25, 1924 – April 7, 1984) was an American lawyer and politician.

A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States Senator from Idaho from 1957 to 1981.

He is known for heading the Church Committee, which investigated abuses within the United States Intelligence Community. Church was born and raised in Boise, Idaho, and served as a military intelligence officer in the China Burma India Theater during World War II. He established a legal practice in Boise after graduating from Stanford Law School.

He defeated incumbent Republican Senator Herman Welker in Idaho's 1956 Senate election, becoming one of the youngest individuals ever to serve in the Senate.

In the Senate, Church became a protégé of Lyndon B. Johnson and established a reputation as a member of the party's liberal wing.

He sponsored the Wilderness Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. He became an important figure in American foreign policy and chaired the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1981.

He was one of the first Senators to publicly oppose the Vietnam War, and co-sponsored legislation to curtail the war.

In 1975, Church led the Church Committee, which inspired the passage of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the creation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

He also led the effort to ratify the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, which returned the Panama Canal Zone to Panama. Church sought the Democratic nomination in the 1976 presidential election, but withdrew from the race in favor of Jimmy Carter.

Church won re-election to the Senate in 1962, 1968, and 1974, but narrowly lost his bid for a fifth term to Republican Steve Symms.

After leaving the Senate, Church practiced international law until his death in 1984.

Early life

Frank Forrester Church III was born on July 25, 1924, in Boise, Idaho. He traced his ancestry from the East Coast of the United States, with his grandfather, Frank Forrester Church I, moving to Idaho during the height of the gold rush that followed the end of the Civil War. Church III was the younger of two sons of Frank Forrester Church II and Laura Bilderback Church. His older brother Richard Church became a career officer in the United States Marine Corps, and retired as a colonel. Another branch of the Church family included Rear Admiral Albert T. Church II, as well as Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III, the author of the Church Report.

His father co-owned a sporting goods store and took the sons on fishing, hunting, and hiking outings in the Idaho mountains. The family was reportedly very Catholic and conservative, with Church attending St. Joseph's School as a youngster, where he went by the nickname "Frosty." In his youth, Church admired senator William Borah, who represented Idaho in the United States Senate from 1907 until 1940. When Borah died in 1940, Church walked by the open coffin in the rotunda of the state capitol. He stated that "Because he was a senator, I wanted to become one, too." Church graduated from Boise High School in 1942, where he served as student body president. As a junior in 1941, he won the American Legion National Oratorical Contest, which resulted in him receiving sufficient funds to provide for his four year enrollment at Stanford University, California, where he joined Theta Xi fraternity.

Church left university in 1942, at the age of 18, and enlisted in the Army following the Attack on Pearl Harbor. He was called up the following year and attended officer candidate training at Fort Benning in Georgia. He trained at Camp Ritchie, as one of the Ritchie Boys, and was commissioned a lieutenant on his 20th birthday. In the army, he served as a military intelligence officer in the China Burma India Theater. He was inducted to the Infantry Hall of Fame at Fort Benning. Following the end of the war, he was discharged in 1946.

In June 1947 he married Bethine Clark, daughter of Chase Clark, a former Democratic governor of Idaho and the federal judge for the state. The wedding took place at the secluded Robinson Bar Ranch (44.247°N 114.678°W / 44.247; -114.678), the Clark family's ranch in the mountains east of Stanley (and now owned by singer Carole King, since 1981). The two had a happy marriage and often showed their affection in public. He entered Harvard Law School that fall and after one year, Church transferred to Stanford Law School, when he thought the cold Massachusetts winter was the cause of a pain in his lower back. The pain did not go away and the problem was soon diagnosed as testicular cancer. After one of his testicles and glands in his lower abdomen were removed, Church was given only a few months to live. However, he rebounded from the illness after another doctor started X-ray treatments. This second chance led him to later reflect that "life itself is such a chancy proposition that the only way to live is by taking great chances." In 1950, Church graduated from Stanford Law School and returned to Boise to practice law and teach public speaking at the junior college.

Frank and Bethine had two sons, Frank Forrester Church IV, who died in 2009, and Chase Clark Church, who lives in Boise. Both boys were named for their grandfathers.

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Career

He became involved in Democratic Party politics after returning to Idaho, and he became Idaho's Young Democrats chairman. He ran for a seat in the then-Republican-controlled Idaho state legislature in 1952 but failed to win the election. In 1956, Church ran for the Class-3 senate seat held by senator Herman Welker, who had alienated many Republicans for his opposition to president Dwight D. Eisenhower's activities and his suspected link to McCarthyism. He entered the primary election, which was described as the "most vibrant primary in the history of the state." He was up against a variety of opponents, including Ricks College professor Claude Burtenshaw, bureaucrat Alvin McCormack, and former Senator Glen H. Taylor.

Church won the nomination, with only 37.7 percent of the vote, barely beating Taylor by 200 votes. Despite winning the democratic nomination, Taylor refused to relinquish, citing a string of voting irregularities in the primary campaign. Church and his campaign hit the road during the general election campaign. The entire campaign took over 75,000 hands by the end of the year. Church also ran a shrewd campaign, comparing his fitness to that of Welker's. His slogan, "Idaho Will Be Proud of Frank Church," was a major contributor to his campaign. The church also ran on a nationalist platform, gave modest support to a high Hell's dam, and was cautious on budget issues.

This was in stark contrast to Welker's campaign, which honed heavily on Anti-Communism, a move that proved to be a poor political foundation. The Welker campaign also ran on his reputation, as well as the "Herman letter," which was a letter in which president Eisenhower endorsed Welker's candidacy. Glen Taylor ran in the general election as a write-in candidate, identifying Church as a candidate of the "corporate interests." Church took the election after defeating Welker and Taylor with a plurality of 46,315 votes. Despite a number of factors that may have stymied Church's campaign, it was despite a variety of factors that may have stymied the church's campaign. The Republican's fundraising boost and president Eisenhower's overwhelming victory in the presidential election are among the presidential candidates.

Church made the mistake of voting on a bill against the wishes of Democratic Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson's wishes, and Johnson suspended Church by about refusing to accept him for the next six months. William Knowland, the Republican Minority Leader, brought the Church of Ireland solace. However, Church managed to find his way into Johnson's admiration by assisting in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. LBJ was so pleased that he made the young Idahoan a true defender, promising him with plum positions, including a seat on the prestigious Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position that enabled Church to follow in the footsteps of his idol, William Borah. "You cannot expect the people, whose sons are killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is kept from them," a young veteran said behind closed doors after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin tragedy.

In 1962, Church was reelected, defeating former state representative Jack Hawley. To date, he is the only Democrat to be popularly voted for more than one term in the Senate.

Ron Rankin, a Republican county commissioner in Kootenai County, northern Idaho, was running a recall campaign against Church in 1967. Rankin unsuccessfully filed a lawsuit in Idaho seeking recall petitions. The US District Court for Idaho found that the state's recall laws did not extend to US senators and that such a recall would be in violation of the United States Constitution. At the time, Allan Shepard, Idaho's attorney general, accepted the court's ruling.

In a June 17, 1967, opinion for the secretary of state, Shepard wrote, "It must be stated that a United States senator is not a state officer, but a federal officer whose position is established by Article I, Section I of the United States Constitution." "There seems to be no provision for canvassing the votes of a recall election of a United States senator." Most commentators at the time believed that the recall campaign strengthened Church politically by encouraging him to play the role of a political martyr, and that he was reelected in the next year's election over Republican congressman George V. Hansen 60 percent to 40 percent.

Church, a central figure in American foreign policy during the 1970s, served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1981. Following an instinct that led him to ask questions early in the 1960s, Church was one of the first senators to publicly condemn the Vietnam War, though he had opposed the war earlier. He was co-author of two legislative attempts to bring the war to a halt: the Cooper-Church Amendment of 1970 and the 1973 Case–Church Amendment.

"The doves had won" on September 19, 1970, Church said on television and in speeches around the country. According to author David F. Schmitz, the church backed up his assertion that two main anti-war war initiatives, "A negotiated peace and the withdrawal of American troops," had been officially declared by the Vatican. The only debate that remained would be over when to withdraw, not if to abandon, and what the war's meaning was.

Church concluded:

The opponents of the Vietnam War, according to the Church, must prevent the country's and its organisations from deteriorating. Senator Carl Schurz, a dissenter from a previous period who said, "Our country is right or wrong," the anti-war protester told Church. "This is not the patriotism of conformity." When correct, to be kept straight; when wrong, to be rectified."

Church rose to national prominence during his tenure in the Senate through his chairmanship of the US Senate Select Committee to Investigate Governmental Relations with Respect to Intelligence Activities from 1975 to 1976, more commonly known as the Church Committee, which held extensive hearings into extra-legal FBI and clandestine intelligence gathering and clandestine activities. The committee looked into CIA drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle and undercover US-backed wars in Third World countries. The Church Committee's findings, as well as Senator Sam Ervin's committee probes, laid the groundwork for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

"I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must ensure that this department and all departments that use this technology operate within the rules and under proper control," Daniel Ellsberg said of the NSA, so we never go through the abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return. Senator Frank Church of 1975 told NBC's "Meet the Press" on August 17, 1975, but didn't disclose the NSA's name: the NSA was not revealed about this program.

The National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the communications of influential Americans, including Senators Church and Howard Baker, Rev., in a classified operation coded "Project Minaret." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other influential journalists and athletes who have slammed the US war in Vietnam. Minaret's "disreputable if not outright unlawful" was ruled by a report by the NSA's Minaret program.

He is also known for his activism as a hardline and environmental king, and he was instrumental in the establishment of the country's system of protected wilderness areas in the 1960s. In 1964, the Church was the primary sponsor of the national Wilderness Act. He sponsored the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968 and won a ten-year moratorium on federal efforts to move water from the Pacific Northwest to California. Church helped establish the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area along the Oregon-Idaho border, shielding the gorge from dam building. In 1972, he was also the primary proponent of the establishment of the Sawtooth Wilderness and National Recreation Area in central Idaho.

In 1980, Church also played a role in the establishment of Idaho's River of No Return Wilderness, his final year in the Senate. This wilderness, as well as the Salmon River Breaks Primitive Area, was included in the old Idaho Primitive Area. It is the country's largest wilderness area outside of Alaska, with a land area of over 3,600 square miles (9,300 km2). It was renamed the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in 1984, shortly after the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Senator Jim McClure of Idaho introduced the bill in the Senate in late February, and President Reagan signed the bill on March 14, less than four weeks before Frank Church's death on April 7.

Frank Church was deemed a progressive (considering that he represented one of the country's most conservative states), but he was a strong opponent of gun control. He was among the first in Congress to announce and condemn the presence of Soviet combat troops in Cuba in 1979. According to the Christian Science Monitor, this stance somewhat disarmed his opponent's argument in 1980 that the Foreign Relations Committee's service on the Foreign Relations Committee had helped to weaken the US militarily. In 1974, Church joined Senator Frank Moss, D-Utah, to sponsor the first legislation to provide federal funds for hospice care services. The bill was not widely supported and was not up for a vote. In 1982, Medicare included a hospice service.

A sub-committee of the United States Senate in late 1975 and early 1976 revealed that Lockheed board members had paid friendly governments to promise military aircraft contracts in a string of illicit bribes and contributions made by Lockheed officials from the late 1950s to the 1970s. Lockheed had paid $22 million in bribes to foreign officials in the process of negotiating the selling of aircraft including the F-104 Starfighter, the so-called "Death of the Century" in 1976.

The "conscience clause," which prohibited the government from requiring church-affiliated hospitals to perform abortions, was also sponsored by the church, as well as Pennsylvania Republican John Heinz.

Church ferriedly for the Democratic nomination in 1976 and declared his candidacy from rustic Idaho City, his father's birthplace. Despite winning primaries in Nebraska, Idaho, Oregon, and Montana, Steve Carter favored the eventual nominee, former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. Following the McGovern-Fraser Commission's reforms, Church remains the only Idahoan to win a major-party primary election. William Borah had won numerous races in the 1936 Republican primaries prior to the primary elections of 1972.

Carter had the nomination process down pat, and it would take time to talk to prospective vice presidential candidates by June. As an experienced senator with strong liberal credentials, the pundits predicted that the Church would be tapped to bring balance. Church persuaded his families to intervene on Carter's behalf. Carter later recalled that if a quick choice had been sought as in previous conventions, he would have chosen Church. However, Carter had reason to be concerned about his compatision with the public-seeking Church, which had a tendency to be long-winded. Instead, Carter invited Senator Edmund Muskie, John Glenn, and Walter Mondale to visit their home in Plains, Georgia, for personal interviews, while Church, Henry M. Jackson, and Adlai Stevenson III were among those attending the convention in New York. Carter found Mondale to be the most compatible of all the candidates. As a result, Carter selected Mondale as his running mate.

Church, a leading advocate for the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which called for returning the Panama Canal to Panama in the late 1970s, was a leading congressional backer of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties. The campaign proved to be highly popular in Idaho, spurring the establishment of the "Anybody But Church" (ABC) committee, which allowed them to spend as much money as they could raise to defy Church.

By less than one percent of the vote, Church lost his bid for a fifth term to Symms. Ronald Reagan's overwhelming win in Idaho was attributed to both the Anybody But Church Committee and the national media's early announcement of his victory. These are among the predictions made before polls closed statewide, especially in the Pacific Time Zone in the north. Many believed that this led to many Democrats in the more politically moderate Idaho Panhandle to not vote at all. Church is the last Democrat to represent Idaho in the Senate as of 2021.

Church served in the Senate for 24 years, and he specialized in Asian affairs at the Washington, D.C., firm of Whitman and Ransom.

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