Richard Sprague Biography

Serves as the committee's first chief counsel.

Resigns after disputes over committee procedure and secrecy rules.

Shortly after Chief Counsel Richard Sprague declined to sign CIA secrecy oaths and began asking pointed questions about Oswald's visit to Mexico City, he began to be denounced in the press and by his own committee chairman, Henry Gonzalez.

The Church Committee's unfinished business fell to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

The committee was almost terminated before it got started, rescued only by the resignations of Gonzalez and Sprague, and the apparent suicide of key witness George de Mohrenschildt