The Senate Intelligence Committee has been concerned, along with many other Americans, with the Central Intelligence Agency’s now-abandoned detention and interrogation policies made infamous during the Bush administration. Its concern prompted a four-year inquiry into the program, and the process has not won committee members many friends at the spy shop. It is safe to say that the CIA – former Director Leon Panetta notwithstanding – has made the SIC’s work difficult. It is not much of a reach to suggest the agency may be actively undermining the efforts. This is not altogether surprising, but it is altogether inappropriate, and a couple of powerful senators are demonstrably and understandably furious.
Top among these is Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Feinstein recounted on the Senate floor Tuesday the committee and its staff members’ dealings with the CIA during the last four years of the inquiry into the detention and interrogation program. The dynamic she described evolved from appropriately terse yet professional and relatively accommodating to outright hostile and underhanded. In short, Feinstein levied charges of illegality and spying by the CIA on the committee’s work.
Perhaps that comes naturally to an agency whose sole raison d’être is to spy and gather intelligence, but when said agency is under investigation – by the body that controls its budget, no less – it is best to play along, however reluctantly. The CIA did not, despite helpfully dumping onto a committee-access-only computer 6.2 million pages of documents, unindexed, for the staff members to sort through.
Among these was an internal review of the detention and interrogation program conducted by Panetta. That report confirmed many of the committee’s findings, and the staff members took a printed copy – redacted according to CIA protocols – to its own secure offices where it was accessible only by those with adequate clearance. Good thing, too, because the report subsequently disappeared from the committee’s computer at the CIA, and the agency began accusing the committee of improperly obtaining it. That apparently was enough to give the CIA reason to secretly search other committee computers. Feinstein is not impressed, nor should any of us be.
“I have grave concerns that the CIA’s search may well have violated the separation-of-powers principle embodied in the United States Constitution, including the speech and debate clause. It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function,” Feinstein said Tuesday. “I have asked for an apology and a recognition that this CIA search of computers used by its oversight committee was inappropriate. I have received neither.”
While at first blush, the tiff might appear to be Beltway baseball, but its implications go far beyond turf wars. As Feinstein and her Intelligence Committee colleague Sen. Mark Udall say, the overreach has dramatic implications for checks and balances. This is particularly important in the context of larger conversations about government spying in general.
“How this will be resolved will show whether the Intelligence Committee can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation’s intelligence activities or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee,” Feinstein said.
The stakes are high.
