Issue #223
The Senate-CIA blowup threatens a Constitutional crisis
Tuesday morning, on C-SPAN, the foundation of the national security state exploded. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, took to the Senate floor and accused the CIA of spying on committee investigators tasked with probing the agency’s past use of harsh interrogation techniques (a.k.a. torture) and detention. Feinstein was responding to recent media stories reporting that the CIA had accessed computers used by intelligence committee staffers working on the committee’s investigation. The computers were set up by the CIA in a locked room in a secure facility separate from its headquarters, and CIA documents relevant to the inquiry were placed on these computers for the Senate investigators. But, it turns out, the Senate sleuths had also uncovered an internal CIA memo reviewing the interrogation program that had not been turned over by the agency. This document was far more critical of the interrogation program than the CIA’s official rebuttal to a still-classified, 6,300-page Senate intelligence committee report that slams it, and the CIA wanted to find out how the Senate investigators had gotten their mitts on this damaging memo. The CIA’s infiltration of the Senate’s torture probe was a possible constitutional violation and perhaps a criminal one, too. David Corn, Mother Jones, 3-11-14.