The
OLLI Times OSHER LIFELONG LEARNING INSTITUTE
OSHER LIFELONG LEARNING INSTITUTE at the University of Georgia Newsletter
Volume 9, Number 2, October 2011
DR. LOCH JOHNSON TO SPEAK ON AMERICA’S SEARCH FOR SECURITY AFTER THE COLD WAR by Betty Jean Craige Dr. Loch Johnson, Regents Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia and an award-winning teacher and scholar, will talk with OLLI members on January 9 about his latest book, The Threat on the Horizon: An Inside Account of America’s Search for Security after the Cold War. Most members of the University community know about Loch’s outstanding research. But not everybody knows about Loch’s influence on policy-makers in Washington over the past four decades. In 1975, after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California at Riverside and joining the Political Science Department at Ohio University, Loch accepted the position of Special Assistant to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. The Church Committee, named after its chairman Senator Frank Church, investigated possible illegalities in the CIA’s gathering of intelligence. It evolved into the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Loch then served Senator Church, one of the first Senators to oppose the Vietnam War publicly, as Issues Director in Church’s 1976 campaign for the Democratic nomination for President. When Church lost to Governor Jimmy Carter, Loch continued to work for Church as Special Assistant to the Ranking Minority Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. From 1977 to 1979, Loch was Staff Director of the Oversight Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. And in 19791980, on leave from the Political Science Department at the University of Georgia where he had just been appointed Associate Professor, Loch was Senior Staff Member of the Subcommittee on Trade and International Economic Policy, under the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
All of his experience with Congress prepared Loch to write some ten major books in the fields of intelligence gathering and foreign affairs. Among them were A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation (1985); America’s Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (1989); Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America’s Quest for Security (2000); and his recent Threat on the Horizon (2011).
Dr. Loch Johnson
While making his reputation as an influential scholar, Loch continued to work in government. In 1995, he went on leave from the University of Georgia to take the position of Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Commission on the Roles and Missions of Intelligence. The Aspin-Brown Commission, as it came to be known, was a combined Presidential-Congressional commission. The Threat on the Horizon is both an examination of the work of the Aspin-Brown Commission and an exploration of the way intelligence agencies have confronted global threats to peace after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book explains why 9/11 caught the United States government by surprise. At 2:00 pm, on January 9, at the Central Presbyterian Church, OLLI members will have the opportunity to hear and interact with a major thinker in the decades-long critique of American intelligence-gathering. We are fortunate that Loch Johnson will share with us his wisdom.