public interest in the
hearings had been that of assassination. CIA Director Bill Colby
very clearly drew the line that the CIA had never plotted such
things domestically. Colby's admission was a brilliant tactical
stroke that was not appreciated until much later. First, it put
the focus on the plots against foreign leaders that could be
explained as excesses of anti-communist zealotry (which is
precisely what the drafters of Church's report did). Second, all
probes into the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK would be off-
limits. The Church Committee would now concentrate on the
performance of the intelligence community in investigating the
death of JFK; not complicity in the assassination itself. This
distinction was crucial. As Colby must have understood, the
Agency and its allies could ride out exposure of plots against
Marxists and villains like Castro, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo
and Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. The exposure of
domestic plots against political leaders would have been lethal.

Colby's gambit, plus the strictures put on the investigation as
outlined by Marchetti above, enabled the intelligence community
to ride out the storm. The path chosen for limited exposure was
quite clever. The most documentation given up by the CIA was on
the Castro assassination plots. Further, the Agency decided to
give up many documents on both the employment of the Mafia to
kill Fidel, and the AM/LASH plots, that is, the enlistment of a
Cuban national close to Castro to try and kill him. Again, not
enough credit has been given to the wisdom of these choices. In
intelligence parlance, there is a familiar phrase: muddying the
waters. This