CIA Accused Of Spying On The Senate Intelligence Committee

[Zaune]

New York Times, via Techdirt

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency’s attempt to keep secret the details of a defunct detention and interrogation program has escalated a battle between the agency and members of Congress and led to an investigation by the C.I.A.’s internal watchdog into the conduct of agency employees.

The agency’s inspector general began the inquiry partly as a response to complaints from members of Congress that C.I.A. employees were improperly monitoring the work of staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to government officials with knowledge of the investigation.

The committee has spent several years working on a voluminous report about the detention and interrogation program, and according to one official interviewed in recent days, C.I.A. officers went as far as gaining access to computer networks used by the committee to carry out its investigation.

The events have elevated the protracted battle — which began as a fight over who writes the history of the program, perhaps the most controversial aspect of the American government’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks — into a bitter standoff that in essence is a dispute over the separation of powers and congressional oversight of spy agencies.

The specifics of the inspector general’s investigation are unclear. But several officials interviewed in recent days — all of whom insisted on anonymity, citing a continuing inquiry — said it began after the C.I.A. took what Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, on Tuesday called an “unprecedented action” against the committee.

The action, which Mr. Udall did not describe, took place after C.I.A. officials came to suspect that congressional staff members had gained unauthorized access to agency documents during the course of the Intelligence Committee’s years-long investigation into the detention and interrogation program.

It is not known what the agency’s inspector general, David B. Buckley, has found in the investigation or whether Mr. Buckley has referred any cases to the Justice Department for further investigation. Spokesmen for the agency and the Justice Department declined to comment.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, gave few details about the dispute on Tuesday as she left a closed committee hearing on the crisis in Ukraine, but she did confirm that the C.I.A. had begun an internal review.

“There is an I.G. investigation,” she said.

Asked about the tension between the committee and the spy agency it oversees, Ms. Feinstein said, “Our oversight role will prevail.”

The episode is a rare moment of public rancor between the intelligence agencies and Ms. Feinstein’s committee, which has been criticized in some quarters for its muscular defense of many controversial intelligence programs — from the surveillance operations exposed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden to the Obama administration’s targeted killing program using armed drones.

The origins of the current dispute date back more than a year, when the committee completed its work on a 6,000-page report about the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation program. People who have read the study said it is a withering indictment of the program and details many instances when C.I.A. officials misled Congress, the White House and the public about the value of the agency’s brutal interrogation methods, including waterboarding.

The report has yet to be declassified, but last June, John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, responded to the Senate report with a 122-page rebuttal challenging specific facts in the report as well as the investigation’s overarching conclusion — that the agency’s interrogation methods yielded little valuable intelligence.

Then, in December, Mr. Udall revealed that the Intelligence Committee had become aware of an internal C.I.A. study that he said was “consistent with the Intelligence Committee’s report” and “conflicts with the official C.I.A. response to the committee’s report.”

It appears that Mr. Udall’s revelation is what set off the current fight, with C.I.A. officials accusing the Intelligence Committee of learning about the internal review by gaining unauthorized access to agency databases.

In a letter to President Obama on Tuesday, Mr. Udall made a vague reference to the dispute over the C.I.A.’s internal report.

“As you are aware, the C.I.A. has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal C.I.A. review, and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the committee’s oversight responsibilities and for our democracy,” he wrote.

The letter gave no details about the “unprecedented action,” but Mr. Udall said that it was important for the committee to “be able to do its oversight work — consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of powers — without the C.I.A. posing impediments or obstacles as it is today.”

Mr. Obama ended the C.I.A.’s detention program in one of his first acts in the Oval Office, and he has denounced the interrogation methods as illegal torture.

Mr. Udall and Mr. Brennan had a testy exchange about the internal C.I.A. document in January, during one of the committee’s rare open hearings.

“Were you aware of this C.I.A. internal review when you provided the C.I.A.’s official response to this committee in June of last year?” Mr. Udall asked.

“It wasn’t a review, Senator, it was a summary,” Mr. Brennan responded. “And at the time, no, I had not gone through it.”

Mr. Brennan, who was a senior C.I.A. official at the beginning of the Bush administration when the interrogations were first begun, has found himself in an awkward position.

During his confirmation hearing last year to become C.I.A. director, he said that he had always been opposed to the techniques and that he had voiced his opposition to other agency officials. He did not say to whom he had expressed these misgivings, and former C.I.A. officials at the time said they could not recall Mr. Brennan’s having opposed the program.

In a statement last year, Mr. Brennan said that the interrogation methods once used by the C.I.A. “are not an appropriate method to obtain intelligence” and that “their use impairs our ability to play a leadership role in the world.” But he has sparred frequently behind closed doors with Senator Feinstein about the committee’s voluminous report.

The Senate’s investigation into the C.I.A. program took four years to complete and cost more than $40 million, in part because the C.I.A. insisted that committee staff members be allowed to review classified cables only at a secure facility in Northern Virginia. And only after a group of outside contractors had reviewed the documents first.

I don't want to be an alarmist, but I'm starting to think we're dealing with something much, much worse than abuses of power committed in the name of a perceived greater good.

[TronPaul]

*snip*

The Senate’s investigation into the C.I.A. program took four years to complete and cost more than $40 million, in part because the C.I.A. insisted that committee staff members be allowed to review classified cables only at a secure facility in Northern Virginia. And only after a group of outside contractors had reviewed the documents first.

These last two lines confuse and worry me. Why would they require private sector workers review documents that they won't even let Congress have offsite? Is only more of the excessive use of private contractors or is there something more here?

[Broomstick]

Any asshat can get elected to Congress, so I think the concern is that you could potentially have a security risk in a legislative member whereas a private contractor can be forced to undergo as thorough a security background check as the hiring agency desires. At least, that's my guess.

Various branches of the US government have spied on each other in the past.

But yeah, it's sort of... odd.

[Grumman]

Any asshat can get elected to Congress, so I think the concern is that you could potentially have a security risk in a legislative member whereas a private contractor can be forced to undergo as thorough a security background check as the hiring agency desires. At least, that's my guess.

That is probably their argument, but that doesn't stop it being bullshit. The CIA should have lost editorial control over these classified documents the second they started committing war crimes.

[Gandalf]

The CIA should have lost editorial control over these classified documents the second they started committing war crimes.

A lot of people in the US should be held accountable for their war crimes.

Don't hold your breath.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Any asshat can get elected to Congress, so I think the concern is that you could potentially have a security risk in a legislative member whereas a private contractor can be forced to undergo as thorough a security background check as the hiring agency desires. At least, that's my guess.

Various branches of the US government have spied on each other in the past.

But yeah, it's sort of... odd.

The thing is, it is the fucking intelligence committee. The committee responsible for the CIA's oversight. There cannot be effective oversight if the body under examination is allowed to withhold documents. To then have a contractor--whom they have paid--censor the documents creates a second conflict of interest. No. Fuck that. In order for there to be oversight, congress must have unfettered access. Dont like it? Be more careful who gets put on the Intel committee.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, they've clearly got something to hide, or feel they do, and as usual don't seem to understand that this sort of tactic actually draws more attention than not.

You really do have to wonder what skeletons are in their closet at this point.

[Thanas]

One has to wonder why a defunct program is causing so much attention. Either the things done there were even more hideous than "slash a penis with a knife to get someone to talk" or the program might not be as defunct as people claim it to be and has merely continued under a different name.

Or the CIA is just so paranoid that everything is classified, which might be equally as likely.

[Broomstick]

Or there are people there afraid of criminal prosecution, even if the program is shut down. That would apply even if there weren't horrific tortures but merely "ordinary" mistreatment.

[Thanas]

Doubtful considering Obama has basically prohibited any criminal prosecution of anything pertaining to the CIA.

[Broomstick]

The constitutionality of any such ban is not up to Obama. Granted, it's unlikely the SCotUS would overturn it, but it could happen in some parallel dimension.

[Thanas]

The constitutionality of any such ban is not up to Obama. Granted, it's unlikely the SCotUS would overturn it, but it could happen in some parallel dimension.

However federal prosecutors are still following his commands and where there is no plaintiff there is no judge.

[Broomstick]

Obama will be replaced in just a few years. If a Republican gets in the prosecutors might change their tune. Or perhaps try to bury things even further.

[Thanas]

I cannot think of a single incident or statement from the opposition or the president in the last decade that would make you think so.

[Broomstick]

No one expected the Pentagon Papers or Watergate, either. That's really the sort of joker/black swan we'd need to crack this open. Granted, neither of those started with prosecutors, rather it was actual journalists that started the process, journalists with the assistance of one or more insiders. Unfortunately, journalism isn't what it used to be.

I anticipate the buried skeletons are going to stay buried for awhile.

[PKRudeBoy]

That's the thing though, if the Pentagon Papers or Watergate came out now it would just be business as usual. We've become so desensitized from minor and manufactured scandals that the big ones don't pop out against the general background of venality and general sleaze.

[Thanas]

No one expected the Pentagon Papers or Watergate, either. That's really the sort of joker/black swan we'd need to crack this open. Granted, neither of those started with prosecutors, rather it was actual journalists that started the process, journalists with the assistance of one or more insiders. Unfortunately, journalism isn't what it used to be.

I anticipate the buried skeletons are going to stay buried for awhile.

I don't know what world you are living in, but Manning released documents showing the president instituting a secret group of officials who can decide to kill US ciitzens on secret evidence. Snowden released documents showing Obama doing very bad things. They had the assistance of some of the best journalists in the entire world. Nobody in the US cared except for a small group of people.

To just sit there and say "we need some more" is ignoring what happened in the last decade or so.

[Broomstick]

Neither Manning nor Snowden are journalists, though, they're whistleblowers, more comparable to Deep Throat than Woodward and Bernstein. They blew the whistle, but nobody gave a damn, they didn't have a guy or three dedicating themselves to making the story public and on the front page. That's why journalism, at least in the US, these days isn't worthy of the name, it's all about fucking celebrities rather than what's actually going on, and the spin is appalling and always in favor of the status quo. Which is why I kept talking about "journalists" in that paragraph. Unless the story is made front-and-center with explanations of WHY the public should give a damn they general population isn't going to get outraged.

Manning was disappeared and spun as a traitor to his uniform, that was what took the headlines here and not why he did what he did. Snowden is spun as a traitor and a defector as well. If the media had spun it as the underdog fighting for truth, justice, and the American way it all would have played out differently. These days, though, media is under the thumb of those who want to maintain the status quo, not those who want to uncover the truth. The only ones actually doing journalism are marginalized and threatened.

[Grumman]

Neither Manning nor Snowden are journalists, though, they're whistleblowers, more comparable to Deep Throat than Woodward and Bernstein. They blew the whistle, but nobody gave a damn, they didn't have a guy or three dedicating themselves to making the story public and on the front page.

Glenn Greenwald doesn't count?

[General Zod]

Neither Manning nor Snowden are journalists, though, they're whistleblowers, more comparable to Deep Throat than Woodward and Bernstein. They blew the whistle, but nobody gave a damn, they didn't have a guy or three dedicating themselves to making the story public and on the front page.

Glenn Greenwald doesn't count?

The way I remember it, the media largely ignored Manning even though he tried going to the NY Times first.

[Thanas]

It is absurd to think that the New York Times, The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Der Spiegel (with a bit of assist from the Washington Post) do not count as journalists anymore. The media did try to cover the story but the american public did not care.