and played a major role in eliminating right-wing dictatorships in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in the 1960s and the communist-dominated regime of Salvador Allende in 1974. The first serious inside-the-government criticism of the CIA occurred during the administration of John Kennedy. The CIA was accused of bungling the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 by Cuban emigres whom the CIA had financed and trained, an operation which Perry says "was poorly planned and executed."
In 1995, Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D-NY) called for the abolition of the CIA, arguing that it had outlived its usefulness after the ending of the Cold War. His statement was an echo of the 1970s in which various excesses of the CIA led many in Congress and the public to question its legitimacy. However, the current wave of criticism is fundamentally different from that which was leveled by the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Ut), and the companion House Select Committee on Intelligence, headed by Rep. Otis Pike (D-NY), in the mid-1970s and in the press. Then, as a result of disclosure of the CIA's role in providing disguises, fake identities and other logistical assistance to former CIA operatives, and in reluctantly participating, on President Richard Nixon's orders, in the coverup of the Watergate burglary and for sundry other related misdeeds, the CIA for the first time came to be seen as a rogue elephant, acting outside or in defiance of the law.
Curtailment of domestic activities. One set of allegations was that the CIA had engaged in spying and otherwise interfering with the rights of American citizens, activities which were documented but which also were ordered by presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. This was a clear violation of the CIA's charter. In April, 1947, Navy Secretary James Forrestal testified before a committee of the House of Representatives that "...