http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spying-senate-staffersThe director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, issued an extraordinary apology to leaders of the US Senate intelligence committee on Thursday, conceding that the agency employees spied on committee staff and reversing months of furious and public denials.
Brennan’ acknowledged that an internal investigation had found agency security personnel transgressed a firewall set up on a CIA network, called RDINet, that allowed Senate committee investigators to review agency documents for their landmark inquiry into CIA torture. The acknowledgement brings Brenan’s already rocky tenure at the head of the CIA under renewed question.
“Some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between SSCI and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to the RDINet,” CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement to reporters, using the acronym for the Senate select committee on intelligence.
In March, the committee chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, accused the agency of violating constitutional boundaries by spying on the Senate.
Feinstein has yet to comment on the CIA statement. But Mark Udall of Colorado, a Demorat on the Senate panel, tweeted that “Brennan misled public” and pledged to “fight for change at the CIA.”
Steve Aftergood, of the Federation of American Scientists and a a longtime observer of the CIA, called the statement a “conciliatory gesture” to the panel’s leaders. “If Senator Feinstein is satisfied with the apology then the affair is effectively over. If she contends there was a fundamental breach that cannot be corrected with a mere apology then some further action might be needed,” Aftergood said.
Feinstein, in her dramatic speech on the Senate floor in March, said the agency breached the firewall to obstruct the committee’s investigation of the agency’s torture of post-9/11 terrorism detainees, a years-long effort expected to be partially declassified in the coming days or weeks. That investigation was itself prompted by a different coverup: the destruction of videotapes of brutal interrogations by a senior official, Jose Rodriguez.
Despite that, the committee has concluded that the torture was an ineffective means of gathering intelligence on al-Qaida - contradicting years of CIA assurances it was crucial - and that the agency lied to its overseers about its value.
Brennan, a confidante of Barack Obama and a senior agency official when the “rendition, detention and interrogation” program was established, immediately denied that his officials had spied on their overseers.
“As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the – you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do,” Brennan said the day of Feinstein’s accusation.
The White House, where Brennan worked as Obama’s senior counterterrorism aide before becoming CIA director in March 2013, did not immediately respond to inquiries asking if Obama retained confidence in Brennan.
The Obama administration has walked a delicate line over the torture report. Obama has insisted its prompt and thorough declassification - which has taken nearly four months - is a priority. Yet appointing the CIA itself as the lead agency determining what aspects of a report directly implicating CIA activities the public can see.
Even before he was sworn in as president, Obama disappointed civil-libertarian supporters by indicating his disinclination to prosecuting agency and ex-Bush administration officials who ordered and implemented the torture program. In 2012, a special prosecutor ended an inquiry without bringing charges. Only one man, a former CIA contractor named David Passaro, has gone to jail in connection to the CIA’s post-9/11 torture.
Brennan’s apology also complicates a developing CIA pushback against a report that agency officials, current and former, consider shoddy. George Tenet, the former director whom Brennan served and who oversaw the brutal practices - where suspected terrorists were subjected to simulated drowning, had guns fired by their heads, were kept in undisclosed prisons for years and were sent to countries like Gadhafi’s Libya and Assad’s Syria for even more abusive treatment - is said to be developing a public strategy to attack the committee once the report is released.
Boyd said Brennan has asked a former committee member, Evan Bayh, a former Indiana Democratic senator, to review the recommendations of the agency inspector general - which vindicated Feinstein and prompted Brennan’s apology - and advise Brennan on next steps.
That advice, Boyd said, “could include potential disciplinary measures and/or steps to address systemic issues.”
The agency, consistent with a pattern that has held since 9/11, appears out of danger from criminal liability. Earlier this month, a Justice Department probe, also first reported by McClatchy, declined to pursue an investigation into Feinstein’s now-vindicated charges.
