| Newsweek | - |
Hours
after Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein,
D-California, took to the Senate floor Tuesday to accuse the CIA of
spying on the committee's computers, the Central Intelligence Agency's
side of the story is beginning to come out.
Tech
Sen. Feinstein: CIA Hacked Congress and Possibly 'Violated' Constitution
The Senate Intelligence Committee leader accused the CIA of interfering with its investigation into the agency's old interrogation programs.
March 11, 2014
The
powerful chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee charged the
CIA on Tuesday morning with covertly removing key documents from
computers used by her panel's staff to investigate the government's
interrogation practices.
In
an impassioned 40-minute speech on the Senate floor accusing the
intelligence agency of possibly violating the Constitution, Dianne
Feinstein lacerated the CIA for accessing in January the computer files
used by committee staffers to review the CIA's now-defunct interrogation
programs. By doing so, the intelligence agency would have violated a
clear agreement that it had made with Feinstein's committee that it
would refrain from monitoring its review.
"I
have grave concerns that the CIA search may well have violated the
separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States
Constitution, including the speech and debate clause," the California
Democrat said. "It may have undermined the constitutional framework
essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence
activities or any other government function."
John Brennan, the CIA's current director, flatly denied Feinstein's
accusations, telling NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell later in the day
that "the allegations of the CIA hacking into computers ... [are]
beyond the scope of reason."
And Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the committee's top Republican, said he did not agree with Feinstein's conclusions.
"We
have some disagreements as to what the findings are," Chambliss said.
"Right now we don't know what the facts are," he said, adding that the
committee will attempt to resolve the issue internally.
Feinstein,
who is frequently regarded as one of the intelligence community's most
resolute defenders, said she has also asked the CIA for an apology and
recognition of wrongdoing. So far, however, she said she has received
neither—and she stopped just short of saying that intelligence officials
lied to her panel.
"How can its official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own internal review?" Feinstein asked.
Feinstein's
prepared remarks, which she said were delivered to correct
misinformation circulating in the press, arrive a week after she confirmed
the CIA was under investigation by the Justice Department for
potentially spying on her committee. The intelligence agency is barred
from spying on Americans, and surreptitious tapping into computers used
by members of Congress and its staff presents concerns about the
separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.
Toward
the end of her lengthy speech, Feinstein enumerated the laws she
believes the CIA may have broken: the Fourth Amendment, which protects
from unreasonable search and seizure; the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act;
and Executive Order 12333, which bars domestic surveillance.
Immediately
after Feinstein's speech, Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy
told the chamber, "I've heard thousands of speeches on this floor. I
cannot think of any speech by any member of either party as important as
the one the senator from California just gave." Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid later piled on: "There's no one that has more courage and
conviction than Dianne Feinstein."
Congress
created the House and Senate Intelligence committees in the 1970s to
oversee the CIA, the National Security Agency, and other spy agencies
after uncovering a string of spying abuses.
Elahe Izadi contributed to this article.
This article appears in the March 12, 2014 edition of NJ Daily.
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Feinstein: CIA Hacked Congress and Possibly 'Violated' Constitution This article appears in the March 12, 2014 edition of NJ Daily.
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