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CIA accused of spying on US Congress

11 March 2014, 18:23 -- Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein has accused the CIA of violating the law and the Constitution of the United States by interfering in a committee investigation into Bush-era torture of terror suspects.

Feinstein accused the CIA of removing documents provided to the committee through a special, segregated network set up by the agency for the committee to pursue its investigation. Among the documents removed was an internal review of CIA interrogation techniques conducted by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, which corroborated committee findings critical of the agency's interrogation program.

"The CIA just went and searched the committee's computers," Feinstein said on the Senate floor.

Feinstein said that the CIA's activities may have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and an executive order barring domestic surveillance conducted by the CIA. Feinstein also said the CIA's activities violated the separation of powers principles in the Constitution by interfering with congressional oversight of the executive branch. Feinstein also said that the CIA Inspector General had referred the matter to the Justice Department.

Feinstein said that releasing the report publicly was critical to ensuring that "an un-American and brutal program of detention and interrogation" will "never again be considered and permitted."

Feinstein said the CIA's accusation that committee staff had somehow "hacked" into the CIA's network were baseless and an attempt to intimidate the committee into abanonding its quest to release a version of the report to the public.

"How this will be resolved will show if the Intelligence Committee can be effective," said Feinstein, or "whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee."

CIA faces new inquiry amid clashes on US controversial surveillance program

The CIA's attempt to keep the details of a defunct detention and interrogation program secret has started a battle between the agency and members of US Congress and led to an investigation by the CIA's internal watchdog into the conduct of its employees.

The agency's inspector general began the inquiry partly as a response to complaints from members of US congressmen that CIA employees were improperly tracking the work of staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The committee has spent several years working on a voluminous report about the detention and interrogation program, and according to one official interviewed in recent days, CIA officers went as far as gaining access to computer networks used by the committee to carry out its investigation.

The events have elevated the battle which began as a fight over who creates the program's history, perhaps the most controversial aspect of the American government's response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks into a standoff that is, in fact, a dispute over the separation of powers.

It is not known what the agency's inspector general, David B. Buckley, has found in the investigation or whether Mr. Buckley has referred any cases to the Justice Department for further investigation. Spokesmen for the agency and the Justice Department declined to comment.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, gave few details about the dispute on Tuesday as she left a closed committee hearing on the crisis in Ukraine, but she did confirm that the C.I.A. had begun an internal review.

Asked about the tension between the committee and the spy agency it oversees, Ms. Feinstein said, 'Our oversight role will prevail.'

The episode is a rare moment of public rancor between the intelligence agencies and Ms. Feinstein's committee, which is known for its muscular defense of many controversial intelligence programs — from the surveillance operations exposed by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to the Obama administration's targeted killing drones program.

The origins of the current dispute date back more than a year, when the committee completed its work on a 6,000-page report about the Bush administration's detention and interrogation program. People who have read the study said it is a withering indictment of the program and details many instances when C.I.A. officials misled Congress, the White House and the public about the value of the agency's brutal interrogation methods, including waterboarding.

Obama ended the CIA's detention program in one of his first acts in the Oval Office denouncing the interrogation methods as illegal torture.

The Senate's investigation into the intelligence agency's program took four years to complete and cost more than $40 million, partly because the CIA insisted that committee staff members be allowed to review classified cables only at a secure facility in Northern Virginia.

Voice of Russia, the NY Times, msnbc.com

Source: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_11/ CIA-accused-of-spying-on-US-Senate-0529/