American public opinion proved to be fickle and shallow, and the
reactionaries in the intelligence community took advantage of this
fickleness to destroy Pike and others like him. When in January 1976 the
Pike Committee approved its draft report slamming the intelligence
community as a dangerous boondoggle, calling for radical budget
reductions, the abolition of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other
radical structural reforms, the special counsel to CIA director George
H. W. Bush called Pike’s office and warned that if the report was
approved, “we’ll destroy him for this.”