United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the Congress. Its select committees conducted the principal congressional investigations of the CIA, the Iran-Contra affair and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International; its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations ran the Army-McCarthy and prisoner-of-war inquiries of the 1950s and the INSLAW and Riggs Bank inquiries of the 1980s and 2000s; and its confirmation votes, ethics proceedings and amendments on unidentified anomalous phenomena are part of the public record.

Creation of the intelligence committee, 1975 to 1976

On January 27, 1975 the Senate approved S. Res. 21, which created the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, by a vote of 88 to 4.¹ Its chairman was Frank Church of Idaho and its vice chairman John Tower of Texas; the members were Philip 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.² The Church Committee issued an interim report on November 20, 1975 covering alleged assassination plots in five countries: Fidel Castro in Cuba, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, General René Schneider in Chile and Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Its summary states that United States Government personnel plotted to kill Castro from 1960 to 1965, that "American underworld figures and Cubans hostile to Castro" were used in the plots, and that in the Lumumba case "Poisons were sent to the Congo."² The final report ran to six books, and the volume on the performance of the intelligence agencies in the investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is dated April 23, 1976.³

The standing committee that followed was created by S. Res. 400. The Government Operations Committee voted unanimously on February 24, 1976 to approve a resolution establishing a permanent standing committee on intelligence activities, and the Rules and Administration Committee reported it on April 29, 1976 after a 5 to 4 vote for an amendment in the nature of a substitute offered by its chairman, Howard Cannon.⁴ Cannon introduced a compromise version on May 12, 1976 with 27 cosponsors, and the Majority and Minority Leaders, Mike Mansfield and Hugh Scott, endorsed it. The Senate agreed to the compromise substitute 87 to 7 and then, on May 19, 1976, agreed to S. Res. 400 by 72 to 22, with six senators not voting, after floor debate spanning ten days and thirteen proposed amendments.⁵ The resolution's stated purposes included "vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States," and the committee received legislative and budget authorization jurisdiction as well as oversight.⁵ The Rules Committee report on the resolution is S. Rept. 94-770.⁶ On July 1, 1976 the chairman of the new Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Daniel Inouye, and the Armed Services chairman, John Stennis, signed a memorandum of understanding on shared jurisdiction while the nomination of E. Henry Knoche as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence was before the Senate.⁷ The committee's first annual report, dated May 18, 1977, was issued under Inouye.⁸

MKULTRA in the record

The Church Committee's Book I describes MKULTRA as a program concerned with the research and development of chemical, biological and radiological materials for use in clandestine operations to control human behavior. It states that in January 1973 MKULTRA records were destroyed by personnel of the Technical Services Division acting on the verbal orders of Sidney Gottlieb, then chief of the division. Gottlieb testified that he was carrying out the verbal order of Director Richard Helms, and the report records that Helms confirmed this.⁹ The MKULTRA material in Book I is on pages 390 and 391.¹⁰

On August 3, 1977 the Select Committee on Intelligence met jointly with the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, chaired by Edward M. Kennedy. Present with Inouye (presiding) and Kennedy were Senators Goldwater, Birch Bayh, Hathaway, Huddleston, Hart, Schweiker, Case, Garn, Chafee, Lugar and Wallop.¹¹ Inouye stated that the hearing concerned new documents on CIA drug testing supplied to the committee in the previous week, and that one purpose was "to hear the reasons why these documents were not available to the Church and Kennedy committees."¹¹ Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner testified with other agency witnesses. His statement reported the discovery of seven boxes of MKULTRA documents, which were found to contain 149 subprojects, and stated that the CIA now held the names of 185 non-government researchers and assistants and of 80 institutions where work was done or with which they were affiliated: 44 colleges or universities, 15 research foundations or chemical or pharmaceutical companies, 12 hospitals or clinics in addition to university-associated ones, and 3 penal institutions. The statement noted that the cryptonym had become public in 1975 when details of the drug-related death of Frank Olson were publicized.¹² Inouye told the hearing that "the programs that are of greatest concern have stopped," and that the committees were reviewing events that had occurred as long as 25 years earlier.¹³

The Senate Watergate committee

The Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities was established by S. Res. 60 of February 7, 1973, with Sam Ervin of North Carolina as chairman and Howard Baker as vice chairman; its members included Herman Talmadge, Inouye, Edward Gurney and Lowell Weicker. Its final report is S. Rept. 93-981 of June 1974.¹⁴ The report states that its knowledge of the activities of G. Gordon Liddy in the "Gemstone" intelligence-gathering plan came from sources other than Liddy, who refused to testify after the committee, pursuant to a court order, conferred "use" immunity; Liddy's role was detailed through the testimony of James McCord, Jeb Stuart Magruder, John Dean, John N. Mitchell and Howard Hunt.¹⁵ Chapter 8 of the report is titled "The Hughes-Rebozo investigation and related matters" and is followed in its table of contents by interviews of Robert Maheu and Nadine Henley of the Howard Hughes organization and concerns the cash contribution delivered to Bebe Rebozo for Richard Nixon.¹⁶ The Church Committee's interim report of the previous year had already described Maheu as an ex-FBI agent who became a private investigator in 1954 and whom the CIA used in sensitive covert operations because "he didn't want to have an Agency person or a government person get caught."¹⁷

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

In June 1956 the subcommittee, chaired by John L. McClellan of Arkansas, held hearings on Communist interrogation, indoctrination and exploitation of American military and civilian prisoners. Its chief counsel was Robert F. Kennedy. The parent Committee on Government Operations included John F. Kennedy, Joseph McCarthy, Henry M. Jackson, Stuart Symington, Sam Ervin and Hubert Humphrey. The witnesses included the physicians Harold G. Wolff and Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr. (the first witnesses, beginning at page 2 of the printed record), the journalist Edward Hunter (pages 66 and 77), the psychologist Albert D. Biderman and a series of returned prisoners and officers.¹⁸ The opening statement put the figures on the record: some 7,190 Americans were captured by the Communists during the three years of the Korean War, about one-third died in Communist hands, and of the 4,428 who survived and were repatriated, "over 95 percent were subjected to a well-planned and well-organized campaign to destroy their belief in God, their loyalty to the United States and their faith in the democratic way of life."¹⁹

In 1953 and 1954 the same subcommittee was chaired by McCarthy, with Roy Cohn as chief counsel from January 15, 1953 to August 13, 1954.²⁰

The subcommittee's staff study of the Justice Department's handling of its contract with INSLAW, printed as S. Prt. 101-58 in 1989 under the Governmental Affairs Committee, found no proof that Attorney General Edwin Meese, Deputy Attorney General Lowell Jensen or other Justice Department officials were involved in a conspiracy to ruin INSLAW or to steal its product; no proof that officials of Hadron were involved in a conspiracy with Justice Department officials; no proof that INSLAW's problems were connected to the Department's Project EAGLE procurement; and no proof that AT&T Information Systems participated in an effort to undermine INSLAW's reorganization. It found that the Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees improperly sought special handling for INSLAW's bankruptcy proceeding, and it found the recantation of Judge Cornelius Blackshear, when considered in light of all the facts, to be implausible.²¹ The study also states that the staff's attempt to conduct a free, full and timely investigation was hampered by the Department's lack of cooperation.²²

On July 15, 2004 the subcommittee, chaired by Norm Coleman with Carl Levin as ranking minority member, released a minority staff report on Riggs Bank. Its first finding states that Riggs "assisted Augusto Pinochet, former president of Chile, to evade legal proceedings related to his Riggs bank accounts and resisted OCC oversight of these accounts."²³ On July 22, 2014, with Levin as chairman, it held a hearing on basket options, at which Levin stated that Renaissance Technologies' Medallion fund had used the structures to produce profits of more than $30 billion from 1999 to 2013, and that Deutsche Bank and Barclays had earned about $570 million and $655 million in revenue from them; the Renaissance witness was co-chief executive officer Peter Brown, and the hearing record carries an examination of the structures' effect on taxes paid.²⁴ On April 27, 2025 the subcommittee's minority staff, under Richard Blumenthal, issued a memorandum stating that as of January 20, 2025 Elon Musk and his companies were subject to at least 65 actual or potential actions by 11 different federal agencies, with potential liabilities estimated for 40 of them at not less than $2.37 billion.²⁵

The BCCI report and the Kerry subcommittee

In December 1992 Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown issued a report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee titled The BCCI Affair (Senate Print 102-140). It covers the investigation conducted by the subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations, the Kerry Committee, into the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.²⁶ The archivist Steven Aftergood wrote in a note to the committee's electronic text that after the report's release "Sen. Hank Brown, reportedly acting at the behest of Henry Kissinger, pressed for the deletion of a few passages, particularly in Chapter 20 on 'BCCI and Kissinger Associates,'" with the result that the version printed by the Government Printing Office differs slightly from the committee's softcopy.²⁷

The report places the February 9, 1988 hearing testimony of former Panamanian consul José Blandón on the same day as the heart attack of the bank's founder, Agha Hasan Abedi. Blandón told the subcommittee that BCCI was handling drug money for Manuel Noriega. A subpoena to BCCI for Noriega records followed in March.²⁸ The Committee's own subpoena was issued on July 27, 1988 and served on August 1, 1988; Clifford wrote Kerry that BCCI would cooperate, asked the full committee's chairman, Claiborne Pell, for a month's delay in producing documents, and met subcommittee staff members Jack Blum and Kathleen Smith. A memorandum to the file by Altman dated August 10, 1988 records Blum as saying that the subcommittee had been led to believe that BCCI, through its banking locations in Panama, Colombia and Miami, had a major involvement in the management of assets for Noriega and for "Michael Harari, reputed to be a close aide of Noriega's, an arms dealer, and formerly an Israeli secret service agent."²⁹ The report also records that Clark Clifford and Robert Altman sold their shares in CCAH in March 1988, shares that had been pledged to BCCI. A letter from Clifford dated February 8, 1988, which asked the bank's Swaleh Naqvi to arrange the sale, was written "some time thereafter" according to the Federal Reserve, and backdated to precede the Abedi heart attack and the Blandón testimony.³⁰

The report describes BCCI's commodities affiliate Capcom as having majority shareholders Kamal Adham and A. R. Khalil, both former senior Saudi officials who acted successively as Saudi Arabia's principal liaisons to the CIA during the 1970s and 1980s. Its American front men included Robert Magness, chief executive of Tele-Communications Inc., and TCI vice president Larry Romrell.³¹ A former manager of BCCI's Sloan Street branch in London, Ghassan Qassem, had been given the accounts of Abu Nidal and passed information on them to British and American intelligence, "apparently as a paid informant, according to press accounts based on interviews with Qassem."³²

The report's list of unanswered questions includes "the alleged relationship between the late CIA director William Casey and BCCI," "the use of BCCI by central figures in the alleged 'October Surprise'," and "the financial dealings of BCCI directors with Charles Keating and several Keating affiliates and front-companies."³³ The subcommittee also stated that payments BCCI made to Andrew Young while he was a public official "were at best unusual, and by all appearances, improper."³⁴

At the start of the subcommittee's hearings "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy," the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, Blandón identified the Israeli agent as Michael Harari, who he said had business with Noriega in Panama in a series of companies for arms contraband to supply the Contras. The agency's report, which spells the name Harare, quotes Blandón as saying "The Harare network is a network that was established with Israeli citizens, Panamanians and U.S. citizens for arms supply purposes," and Yosef Gal, the Israeli embassy spokesman, as saying that Harari was "acting as a private citizen" in his dealings with Noriega and that the Israeli government had no knowledge of his activities.³⁵

Iran-Contra and the Contra drug allegations

The Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition, chaired by Inouye with Warren Rudman as vice chairman, took part in the joint investigation with the House committee. The joint report of November 1987 appeared as S. Rept. 100-216 and H. Rept. 100-433.³⁶ Among the joint files is a staff memorandum from Robert A. Bermingham to the House committee's chairman, Lee Hamilton, and chief counsel John Nields on allegations of Contra involvement in drug smuggling. It states that "Our investigation has not developed any corroboration of media-exploited allegations" of U.S. government-condoned drug trafficking by Contra leaders or organizations. It records that Dave Faulkner, an investigator for the Senate select committee, advised that the Senate investigation was also "substantially negative" with regard to Contra drug smuggling; that on July 21, 1987 counsel Hayden Gregory of the Crime Subcommittee of the Judiciary said his investigation had been inconclusive and had developed no pertinent information "above the level of 'street talk'"; that several of those involved had also been questioned or deposed in Senator Kerry's ongoing investigation; and that "almost all of these allegations originate from persons indicted or convicted of drug smuggling."³⁷

Donald Gregg, Vice President George H. W. Bush's national security adviser, was nominated as ambassador to South Korea in 1989. The Christian Science Monitor wrote on June 20, 1989 that Gregg had in 1985 helped his CIA acquaintance Felix Rodriguez obtain a position with the Salvadoran Air Force that became a cover for assisting the Contras, that Gregg insisted he had been kept uninformed for a year and a half, and that senators had been "denied some important documents."³⁸ The Senate confirmed him on September 12, 1989 by 66 votes to 33.³⁹

The Gates confirmation

The Select Committee on Intelligence reported the nomination of Robert Gates as Director of Central Intelligence on October 24, 1991, after a committee vote of 11 to 4 on October 18.⁴⁰ The report records that Richard Babayan alleged in news reporting and other forums that Gates had assisted an individual named M. K. Moss in a covert CIA operation to supply arms to Iraq, had sought to transfer cluster bomb technology to Carlos Cardoen, and was aware that a Lancaster, Pennsylvania company was supplying arms to Iraq through South Africa. Cardoen denied meeting Gates in a letter of July 16, 1991. The CIA Inspector General and the FBI were asked to investigate, and the committee wrote that "no credible evidence has been presented to the Committee to support these allegations."⁴¹ In examining Gates's relationship with Cardoen, the committee obtained information about a relationship between Cardoen Industries and a former part-time senior CIA employee, and about a potential conflict of interest arising from James D. Theberge's simultaneous relationship with the agency and a Cardoen subsidiary while he served on the Senior Review Panel.⁴²

Ari Ben-Menashe alleged to the Select Committee on Intelligence during the hearings that Gates conspired with the Reagan-Bush campaign to delay the release of the American hostages and was present at various meetings, including those in Paris; Gates denied the allegations under oath, and the committee later reported that investigations by the FBI and the CIA Inspector General, including analyses of Gates's calendars and travel records, provided no credible evidence to confirm them.⁴³ The additional views of Senators John Chafee and John Warner, printed with the committee report, list the questions asked about Gates, among them "Did he illegally enter the United States with Ari Ben Menasche carrying a suitcase stuffed with $16 million in unmarked $100 bills?" They state that Gates's travel records demonstrate he could not have been in Miami when Ben-Menashe claimed he was.⁴⁴ The Senate confirmed Gates on November 5, 1991 by 64 votes to 31.⁴⁵

Confirmation votes

R. James Woolsey's nomination as Director of Central Intelligence was heard on February 2 and 3, 1993 by the Select Committee on Intelligence under its chairman, Dennis DeConcini.⁴⁶ The Senate rejected the nomination of John Tower as Secretary of Defense on March 9, 1989 by 47 votes to 53.⁴⁷ It confirmed Porter Goss as Director of Central Intelligence on September 22, 2004 by 77 to 17,⁴⁸ John Ratcliffe as Director of the CIA on January 23, 2025 by 74 to 25,⁴⁹ Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence on February 12, 2025 by 52 to 48,⁵⁰ Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce on February 18, 2025 by 51 to 45,⁵¹ Kash Patel as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on February 20, 2025 by 51 to 49,⁵² and Todd Blanche as Attorney General on August 8, 2026 by 50 to 49.⁵³

At the confirmation hearing of Hillary Clinton before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 13, 2009, ranking member Lugar stated that "the main issue related to Senator Clinton's nomination that has occupied the Committee has been a review of how her service as Secretary of State can be reconciled with the sweeping global activities of President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation."⁵⁴

In 1985 the Senate Judiciary Committee considered the nomination of William Bradford Reynolds as Associate Attorney General. The Christian Science Monitor reported on June 20, 1985 that the committee had ten Republicans and eight Democrats, that his confirmation was "said to be in serious trouble" over statements challenged with sworn affidavits and documents, and that DeConcini told Reynolds the issue was not busing and quotas; on June 26 it reported that the committee had postponed its vote on June 20 because there was no majority for recommending confirmation.⁵⁵ The Washington Post of June 28, 1985 reported the committee's 10 to 8 vote of June 27 against the nomination.⁵⁶

The 2014 detention report

The committee's study of the CIA's detention and interrogation program was approved by a 9 to 6 vote on December 13, 2012, and filed with the Senate on December 9, 2014 as S. Rept. 113-288, with a foreword by Chairman Dianne Feinstein.⁵⁷ Finding 1 states: "The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees."⁵⁸ The additional views of Susan Collins and the minority views of Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss and Senators Richard Burr, Jim Risch, Dan Coats, Marco Rubio and Tom Coburn are printed with the report.⁵⁹

Aerospace programs and the UAP provisions

On June 24, 2009 Harry Reid, then Senate Majority Leader, wrote to Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III. The letter states: "Beginning this past September, the U.S. Senate has mandated that the Defense Intelligence Agency assess far-term foreign advanced aerospace threats to the United States." It asks that a restricted special access program be established for specific portions of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, whose studies the letter describes as covering advanced lift, propulsion, unconventional materials and signature reduction.⁶⁰ A Defense Intelligence Agency talking paper of May 4, 2009, "Senator Reid Visit to Director, DIA," states that Senator Inouye and Senator Reid sponsored language in the July 2008 supplemental appropriation bill for the agency to initiate an investigation of foreign advanced aerospace weapon threats from the present out to 40 years in the future, and that Reid had a deep interest in the potential threat posed by unconventional aerospace technologies.⁶¹ A 2010 DIA information memorandum states that the program was first sponsored in the fiscal year 2008 Defense Supplemental Appropriation Act by Senators Reid and Inouye with a $10 million add.⁶²

On July 13, 2023 Senator Chuck Schumer, for himself and Senators Mike Rounds, Marco Rubio, Kirsten Gillibrand, Todd Young and Martin Heinrich, submitted an amendment (S.Amdt. 797) to S. 2226, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, titled the "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2023."⁶³ The text defines "non-human intelligence" as "any sentient intelligent non-human lifeform regardless of nature or ultimate origin that may be presumed responsible for unidentified anomalous phenomena or of which the Federal Government has become aware," defines "technologies of unknown origin" to include crash debris, mechanisms and "damaged or intact aerospace vehicles, and damaged or intact ocean-surface and undersea craft" associated with such phenomena, creates an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Review Board, and in section 1110 provides: "The Federal Government shall exercise eminent domain over any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities in the interests of the public good."⁶⁴ The senators' press release of July 14, 2023 described the amendment as modeled on the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, and Schumer said: "The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena."⁶⁵

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, enacted December 22, 2023 as Public Law 118-31, contains Subtitle C on unidentified anomalous phenomena. Section 1841 directs the Archivist of the United States to establish an "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection" in the National Archives.⁶⁶ Section 7343 provides that no funds authorized by the division may be obligated for UAP activity protected by a special or restricted access limitation unless the Director of National Intelligence has given the details to the appropriate committees and congressional leadership, including for activities described in a report released by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office in fiscal year 2024.⁶⁷ On July 11, 2024 Rounds, for himself and Schumer, submitted S.Amdt. 2610 to S. 4638, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, titled the "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2024," which carries the same eminent domain provision.⁶⁸

The Keating Five and other ethics matters

In early 1991 the Senate Ethics Committee reported on five senators who had met federal bank regulators on behalf of Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan. The panel found "substantial credible evidence" that Alan Cranston "may have engaged in improper conduct." Of DeConcini and Donald Riegle, it found that their conduct "gave the appearance of being improper and was certainly attended with insensitivity and poor judgment," but that they did not violate law or Senate rules. John Glenn and John McCain each, on one occasion, exercised poor judgment.⁶⁹ The committee's preliminary inquiry had begun on December 21, 1989, and it transmitted its report to the Senate on November 19, 1991, a sequence described in the Senate on January 4, 1995 by Jesse Helms, who had been a member of the committee during the proceedings.⁷⁰ On November 20, 1991 the committee reprimanded Cranston for "improper and repugnant" conduct; Cranston expressed "deep remorse" and told the Senate he accepted the reprimand, while denying the committee's assertion that he had violated "accepted norms" of Senate ethical behavior. The committee's chairman, Howell Heflin, said the panel found convincing evidence of a pattern of conduct "in which fund-raising and official activities were substantially linked."⁷¹

The Justice Department moved on April 1, 2009 to drop the indictment of former Senator Ted Stevens, whom a jury had convicted the previous fall on seven counts of lying on his Senate disclosure form, in order to conceal $250,000 in gifts from an oil industry executive and other friends.⁷²

Robert Menendez resigned from the Senate effective August 20, 2024, after his federal conviction, while the committee had voted to proceed with an adjudicatory review. On August 21, 2024 the committee's chairman, Christopher Coons, and vice chairman, James Lankford, issued a statement that "The Committee only has jurisdiction over sitting members of the Senate. As such, the Committee has lost jurisdiction for its adjudicatory review and has closed this matter."⁷³

Senators and committee staff

DeConcini was a Democratic senator from Arizona from January 4, 1977 to January 3, 1995.⁷⁴ He chaired the Select Committee on Intelligence in the 103rd Congress, as the Woolsey hearing record shows.⁴⁶ In 1989 he chaired the Special Committee on Investigations of the Select Committee on Indian Affairs, whose chairman was Inouye, in hearings that included testimony on the Cabazon Indian Casino in Riverside County, California; the printed record includes a report describing Rocco Zangari, who had operated the casino's cardroom, as a Southern California organized crime figure who in 1988 pleaded guilty to extortion charges, and Anthony Daniels, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division, appears among the witnesses.⁷⁵ Hank Brown served in the Senate from Colorado from January 3, 1991 to January 3, 1997. Bob Kerrey served from Nebraska from January 3, 1989 to January 3, 2001, and was vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence under Chairman Richard Shelby in the 105th Congress.⁷⁴⁷⁶ Helms served from North Carolina from January 3, 1973 to January 3, 2003.⁷⁴ Paula Hawkins served from Florida from January 5, 1981 to January 3, 1987, and in 1981 she appointed Jay Howell chief counsel to the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, where he conducted investigations and drafted legislation on missing children, child kidnapping, child pornography and serial murder.⁷⁴⁷⁷ The Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, a former governor, took his Senate seat on January 3, 2001 and served until January 3, 2013.⁷⁴ Ben Sasse served from Nebraska from January 6, 2015 to January 8, 2023; as a member of the Judiciary Committee he wrote on December 3, 2018 to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility asking it to investigate the prosecutors who negotiated Jeffrey Epstein's 2007 non-prosecution agreement, and his office announced on February 6, 2019 that the Department had responded that the office had opened an investigation.⁷⁴⁷⁸ JD Vance served from Ohio from January 3, 2023 to January 9, 2025.⁷⁴

On February 12, 2003 Roll Call reported that Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Intelligence Committee's new vice chairman, had hired Christopher Mellon as minority staff director, writing: "It's starting to look like the Rockefellers and Mellons are taking over the Senate Select Intelligence Committee."⁷⁹

The Senate's treaty record includes territorial and law-enforcement conventions. The Foreign Relations Committee took no action on the 1867 convention for the cession of St. Thomas and St. John until March 24, 1870, when Charles Sumner reported it adversely and the Senate acquiesced; the 1916 convention for the cession of the Danish West Indies received the Senate's advice and consent by resolution of September 9, 1916, and ratifications were exchanged on January 17, 1917.⁸⁰ The United States and Jamaica signed a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty at Kingston on July 7, 1989, which the President transmitted to the Senate on October 25, 1991 (Treaty Doc. 102-16), the Foreign Relations Committee reported favorably on May 7, 1992 (Senate Executive Report 102-32), and the Senate gave its advice and consent on July 2, 1992.⁸¹