Tuesday, April 4, 2017

C is for Church Committee: Intelligence abuses by the CIA



Years before Edward Snowden was even born, the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS were all under scrutiny for VBB (very bad behavior).

In 1975, Senator Frank Church (an Idaho democrat) led a committee to investigate abuses including “spying on civilians (for some reason they were particularly interested in a  charismatic minister named Martin Luther King, Jr.), assassination attempts against foreign leaders, and covert attempt to subvert foreign governments.” (Wikipedia

According to this Infowars post, "Cancer, car accidents, skiing accidents, suicide, boating accidents, heart attacks, and just plain being shot were common assassination methods."

And if those methods failed, they could bring out their handy-dandy heart attack gun. Yes, you read that right: heart-attack gun. A poison would be frozen into the shape of a small dart, which could be fired into a person with a pistol. (Global Research)

Here’s a minute-long clip of the actual Church Committee hearing with the “heart-attack gun”. Church is the fellow on the left.





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Now for the deepest undercover spy the world has never known...(totally kidding, although Piper's mom does change jobs a lot. Hmmm, might be a good cover for a secret agent, Stephanie! ;)




Blurb:

Piper Morgan tries her hand at acting in the fourth book of the charming Piper Morgan series.

Piper’s mom is helping out at a local pool shop, and the owner wants to shoot a commercial for his store. Piper thinks it’s the PERFECT opportunity to get in front of the camera and experience a little bit of showbiz. But will Piper’s contribution to the TV commercial make a splash—or will it go belly-up?

Bio:



Stephanie Faris is the author of the middle grade books 30 Days of No Gossip and 25 Roses, as well as the Piper Morgan chapter book series. An accomplished freelance writer, her work has appeared in Writer's Digest, The Writer, Pacific Standard, Mental Floss, and The Week, among many others.

Author Links:

Win a free copy:

Buy Links:




_________________


Have you ever heard of the Church Committee? Fan of James Bond films? My dad took me to see several the 007 movies featuring Roger Moore and that creepy villain with the metal teeth when I was growing up. 


33 comments:

  1. I have not heard of the Church Committee :). I am a fan of James Bond and the heart-attack gun sounds like something Blofeld would have liked. I never found Jaws creepy, he was too ridiculous :)
    Tasha
    Tasha's Thinkings - Shapeshifters and Werewolves

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  2. I enjoyed Skyfall and a couple of others, not a great fan or anything,but the hubby is totally obsessed with them, some channel here was doing a retrospective and it was on like 24/7, uff!

    Heart attack gun would be my weapon of choice too :)my fav bit in this post, for some inexplicable reason, is VBB :D

    Nilanjana.
    Madly-in-Verse

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  3. Wow, I've never heard of this one! Why bother freezing the poison and shooting it into someone, though? After all, Georgi Markov was killed with a tiny pellet of ricin that was simply fired out of a modified umbrella! Clearly the CIA was working too hard... ;)

    26 Things To Hate About Writing: C is for Creating Characters

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  4. I love the name of the committee. It creates a very interesting mix of clandestine, under-the-crypt kind of collusion.

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  5. Spy stories make great reading, don't they.

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  6. Just what I needed to start my morning, another thing to wonder about - a heart attack gun. Was that Barry Goldwater smiling as he held the gun?

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  7. When it come to the government I always wonder how much is true in conspiracy theories. You never know how much those we place in power are willing to go and hide.

    ~Patricia Lynne aka Patricia Josephine~
    Story Dam
    Patricia Lynne, Indie Author

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  8. New one for me, but I don't put anything past the powers that be. Killing the innocent, infiltrating for propaganda purposes, why not!

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  9. Whoa! Heart attack gun.....hearing about it for the first time!

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  10. Heart attack guns! Good grief! And how did they ever "assassinate" by cancer? What an interesting post.

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  11. Suicide as an assassination method seems a bit odd...

    -----
    Eva - Mail Adventures
    C is for Castle.

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  12. That senator might have slowed them down, but I bet they still continue some of those practices.

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  13. The heart attack gun sounds like something from a movie. Scary thought that it actually exists, especially if it were to fall into the wrong hands. Cancer as an assassination method? How?

    Debbie @ THE DOGLADY'S DEN
    Latest Post: CHERRY HILL PARK: First love is the hardest!

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  14. Well that was a sort of mind bending change in the middle of your post. That is the sort of thing that could give a chap a heart attack . . . MMmmm suspicious

    And many thanks for visiting twice now, that is also the sort of thing that could give a chap a heart attack. Luckily I am a healthy chap and very very cynical . . . I have been told cynical folk have less heart attacks and are much harder for the CIA to pin down in a dark alleyway.

    Enjoy the Alphabet . . . .

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  15. Scary to know there are such gadgets as heart attack guns out there. Whatever happened to get hit by a truck? Twice?
    Then again I'm not surprised. So many people have to disappear, and they have the strangest accidents.

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  16. The latest revelations about Susan Rice probably don't even shock you. It's the way government runs anymore.

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  17. Tamara, Nothing surprises me when it comes to all this clock and dagger stuff laced with lies, wiretaps, and murder. The government isn't here to help you, their here to do harm to anyone who opposes them. Intriguing read. Great "C" post! Thanks for stopping by to catch my critter sketches in my A2Z Art Sketching Through the Alphabet series. Have an awesome day and happy a2zing! ;)

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  18. You might be amused to learn that the CIA is blamed for just about every strange event, outside the U.S. The world's biggest conspiracy theory! No doubt it is responsible for some things, but all of it?

    Tamara, thanks for your return of my comment, but you somehow ended up on a blog I tried and failed to get going some years ago. Wordpress, ack! I HATE it! But when I comment on a Wordpress blog, it will only let me comment with my Wordpress ID, or, sometimes, with my Twitter handle.

    My current blog is The Great Raven, a Blogger blog, where I'm doing my A to Z Challenge. It's http so://suebursztynski.blogspot.com.

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  19. Sorry, that's https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com. Stupid predictive text on my iPad. But my name should click through anyway.

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  20. Nope - never heard of the Church Committee or Heart Attack guns - which just don't seem like the most, well, efficient way to go about killing someone if that's the goal. As for Bond - my father loves him and owns many of the movies, but it was just never my thing - Louise

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  21. This is my first time hearing of heart attack guns. Interesting post!

    Wishing Stephanie the best of luck. Love the cover of this Piper Morgan adventure. Adorable!
    ~Jess

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  22. Oh, wow. I have never heard of a poison dart gun for heart attacks. Why does Russia suddenly come to mind?

    Cute book cover, Stephanie. Best of luck!!

    #AtoZChallenge
    "Female Scientists Before Our Time"
    http://shells-tales-sails.blogspot.com/

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  23. I do remember the Church Committee (and I've been to lots of church committee meetings where I wondered if there wasn't some kind of conspiracy). But for Church, I'd like to remember him for the Frank Church wilderness area in his beautiful state of Idaho.

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  24. I've been trying to figure out what the hell is up with Piper Morgan's mother for 2 years. Thank you for solving the mystery!

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  25. I had not heard of the Church Committee. Heart attack gun? Really?

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  26. Hi Stephanie, love the CIA not f=because what they do but what we perceive they do. No shortage of novel inspiration when it comes to the CIA.

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  27. I hadn't heard of the Church committee, but that is super creepy! Another great post, Tamara--I'm loving this topic.

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  28. I've never heard of the Church Committee either. But I've read my share of spy novels, and this seems believable.

    Dapjeongneo and Deppenfahrerbeaugung: Exotic Words with no English Equivalent

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  29. Cancer? An assassination plan that involves the target not dying right away? That's either a really long gambit or just not the best plan.

    While the heart attack gun does sound like a scary weapon, the idea of inducing a heart attack using a dart gun just sounds ludicrously over complicated.

    Also, I was never a James Bond fan growing up, though I've developed a fondness for the films as an adult (well, some of them). Still wouldn't really call myself a 'fan', though...

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  30. A heart attack gun sounds like the perfect weapon, actually - as along as they used it on age-appropriate targets! Great post, loved the "We interrupt this conspiracy for a book announcement..." 😀
    Jamie Lyn Weigt | Writing Dragons Blog | AtoZ 2017 - Dragons in Our Fandoms

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  31. Woah, a heart attack gun sounds stranger than fiction!

    Cait @ Click's Clan

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