Posted on 03/05/2014 10:09:39 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
WASHINGTON — The CIA Inspector General’s Office has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of malfeasance at the spy agency in connection with a yet-to-be released Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, McClatchy has learned.
The criminal referral may be related to what several knowledgeable people said was CIA monitoring of computers used by Senate aides to prepare the study. The monitoring may have violated an agreement between the committee and the agency.
The development marks an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the CIA and its congressional overseers amid an extraordinary closed-door battle over the 6,300-page report on the agency’s use of waterboarding and harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists held in secret overseas prisons. The report is said to be a searing indictment of the program. The CIA has disputed some of the reports findings.
White House officials have closely tracked the bitter struggle, a McClatchy investigation has found. But they haven’t directly intervened, perhaps because they are embroiled in their own feud with the committee, resisting surrendering top-secret documents that the CIA asserted were covered by executive privilege and sent to the White House.
McClatchy’s findings are based on information found in official documents and provided by people with knowledge of the dispute being fought in the seventh-floor executive offices of the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va., and the committee’s high-security work spaces on Capitol Hill.
The people who spoke to McClatchy asked not to be identified because the feud involves highly classified matters and carries enormous consequences for congressional oversight over the executive branch.
The CIA and the committee declined to comment.
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to discuss the matter and referred questions to the CIA and the Justice Department...
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
Americans WERE always on the side of the Company.
No more.
Now, al Qaeda is inside, and even the US
Congress is the “enemy”.
Well that explains it!!! The Democrats walk in LOCKSTEP with the Purple Lipped President and the Republicans are SCARED LITTLE GIRLS!!!!
The CIA gets in bed with the FBI to spy on WHICH side of the Senate? Surely it couldn’t be the reason all the rhino’s are down in the hole with the ground hogs. We, the American people need to get rid of the entire bunch and start all over. Its past time for a revolution.
Nixon was going to be impeached for using the CIA and the IRS. J Edgar Hoover stood tough against Nixon making him the last leader of the FBI to do so.
Obama goosesteps on the bill of rights and it goes un-noticed.
In a perfect world everyone in this regime would be hung for treason.
The failure ultimately lies in "We the People" for having allowed men of low character to occupy offices of power.
This is the great fear of term limits - the shadow government becomes even less accountable that they already are.
The spying is to catch leakers.
Senators were not the targets. The targets were the staffers that consider themselves immune from leaking penalties.
Staffer self esteem can be measured in leaks
LOL!!
Good one
Said offices would not exist save for the actions of men of low character - classic chicken/egg argument.
I think all of those questions should be answered before anyone in the House, Senate or anywhere else does anymore business with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I refuse to discuss any other subject regarding him until that’s all settled. Everyone else should too.
The Senate is controlled by Obama’s allies.
Key point. Sounds like the Senate Dems stole some CIA docs Sandy Burglar style.
The spying is to catch leakers.
Senators were not the targets. The targets were the staffers that consider themselves immune from leaking penalties.
Staffer self esteem can be measured in leaks
Yes, Dem staffers. This is the waterboard stuff that gets Dems foaming at the mouth. No surprise they would rip whatever they could to support their case and/or embarrass the CIA/GOP.
The 4th branch of government the bureaucracy: unelected, unaccountable(see current NSA and IRS scandals)in all positions of power and they have the dirt on the other members of the three other branches of government.
To the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches all I can say is BRILLIANT! Dumb a$$es...
Good question. This is definitely a psy-ops warfare, as both sides might have an interest in getting the "first mover" advantage by leaking this development.
Senate Committee staffers have an incentive to portray the agency as paranoid and "insubordinate," to inoculate themselves from the charges of "stealing" the proof of classified info they clearly had been given access to.
CIA'a interest is to gain an advantage in the possible hearings or election-style political posturing, by preempting the possible disclosure and mischaracterization / misrepresentation of raw data, and painting the Committee members and staffers as "thieves and leakers" who are not to be trusted now and in the future with access to some classified documents and [preliminary or ex post facto] intelligence.
From Senate staffers slipped secret CIA documents from agency's headquarters - McClatchy DC, 2014-03-05, by Jonathan S. Landay, Ali Watkins and Marisa Taylor :
..... Some committee members regard the monitoring as a possible violation of the law and contend that their oversight powers give them the right to the documents that were removed. On the other hand, the CIA considers the removal as a massive security breach because the agency doesn't believe that the committee had a right to those particular materials. said a U.S. official who was among those who spoke to McClatchy. "You've got to be asking yourself why the agency would be willing to take such a risk. The documents must be so damned loaded." ..... < snip > ..... The extraordinary battle has created an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the spy agency and its congressional overseers and raises significant implications for the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of the government. It also has fueled uncertainty over how much of the committee's report will ever be made public. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... In a combative statement issued Wednesday evening, CIA Director John Brennan chastised unidentified senators for making "spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts." ..... < snip >
Given this, my money is on CIA leaking first. One, they have very little to lose, and much to gain, in future dealings with Senate / Congress overseers.
Two, the Senate staff was clearly fishing for something that could be politically described as a "proof of torture" than anything they could find before in "the materials that were taken from CIA headquarters [which] found their way into a database into which millions of pages of top-secret reports, emails and other documents were made available to panel staff after being vetted by CIA officials and contractors" - which means they currently don't have anything tangible that they really wanted to have for their political case.
On the other hand, the Democrats didn't really have to go to great lengths to be able to refer to the "classified information obtained from the CIA by the Senate Committee oversight panel" for their political purposes, so any leaks to the media/McClatchy would only be defensive, needed as a damage control, and in this case they don't have much more than a strategy of "rank superiority and indignation."
But it also allows them a little offensive play, to give the impression and imply that any info they supposedly had the right to "take" was of a "damned loaded" variety.
My score for now: CIA - 1, Senate Democrats - 0
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.