Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-CA, and CIA Director John O. Brennan.
The CIA and Congress are in an intense battle over government secrecy and constitutional powers, with the Senate intelligence committee’s chairwoman on Tuesday accusing the spy agency of illegally snooping on Congress and then trying to get congressional staffers brought up on criminal charges.
But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, committee chairwoman and California Democrat, said it was the CIA, not her staffers, who may have broken laws by secretly accessing and erasing documents from congressional computers and filing the criminal accusations in an effort to intimidate the Senate into backing down in its investigation into potential CIA torture practices.
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In an extensive speech on the Senate floor, Mrs. Feinstein confirmed publicly that the CIA on several occasions had snooped through congressional computers, removing documents that the agency had previously turned over — most recently an internal CIA review that was critical of its own interrogation and detention practices known as the “Panetta review.”
The CIA has claimed committee staffers stole that document and never should have had access in the first place, and Mrs. Feinstein said CIA Director John Brennan confirmed to her that his agents had conducted a “search” of congressional computers to find and erase the document.
“The CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the internal review or how we obtained it. Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee’s computers,” Mrs. Feinstein said. “The CIA has still not asked the committee any questions about how the committee acquired the Panetta review. In place of asking any questions, the CIA’s unauthorized search of the committee’s computers was followed by an allegation, which we have now seen anonymously in the press that the committee staff had obtained the document through unauthorized or criminal means.”
Speaking less than two hours later, Mr. Brennan wouldn’t address any of the specific charges Mrs. Feinstein made, but said he and his agency are not trying to thwart her investigations, and he denied that his agents had infiltrated congressional computers.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. We wouldn’t do that. That’s just beyond the scope of reason,” he said.
He said the matter has been referred for both internal investigations to the Justice Department, and he said he’ll wait for those reviews to say whether either side broke the law.
“I would just encourage members of the Senate to take their time to make sure they don’t overstate what they claim and what they probably believe to be the truth,” he said.
Mrs. Feinstein said the Panetta review was turned over to her committee by the CIA itself, and was findable using the search techniques the CIA gave to committee staffers. She said it’s not clear whether the CIA intended to give it or not — and even raised the possibility it had been included by a whistle-blower — but said either way, it was legally obtained by the committee.
Committee staffers with proper clearance took a copy of the document from a secure facility in Northern Virginia and brought it to the committee’s offices in the Senate — moves Mrs. Feinstein said complied with all legal and procedural requirements for handling sensitive material.
The dispute centers on a yearslong committee investigation into the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, which many have labeled torture, and that were authorized by the Bush administration for use in the war on terror.
Mrs. Feinstein’s committee has produced a 6,300-page report highly critical of the CIA, arguing that the detention and interrogation techniques were far worse than had previously been revealed.
The CIA has publicly said it disagrees with some of those conclusions — but Mrs. Feinstein said the agency’s own assessment, contained in the Panetta review, shows they actually agree with the key critical findings.
“To say the least, this is puzzling,” she said. “How can the CIA’s official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own internal review?”
She also said the CIA has filed an official accusation with the Justice Department saying committee staffers broke the law by accessing and taking the Panetta review documents. But Mrs. Feinstein said that appeared to be an effort to intimidate the committee into backing down.
She said the person who filed that accusation was actually involved in the CIA’s interrogation programs and is named repeatedly in the committee’s critical report.
Read more: Washington Times