Senator accuses CIA of spying on senate panel

12 Mar 2014

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A long-standing dispute between the CIA and its senate overseers burst into public view yesterday with the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee accusing the agency of possible crimes.

The agency also stood accused of intimidating committee staffers investigating the CIA's former use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques.

According to senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the committee chairwoman, the investigation agency secretly searched computers used by senate staffers and might have fallen afoul of constitutional provisions on separation of powers and unreasonable searches.

It could have also breached a federal law on computer fraud and abuse, and also a presidential order that prohibited the CIA from domestic searches and surveillance.

"I am not taking it lightly," the senator who is known for her unstinting support to US intelligence warned on the Senate floor.

A few hours later, CIA director John Brennan denied that the Senate oversight committee had been spied upon or had its computers hacked its computers.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," Brennan said at an event. "We wouldn't do that. That's just beyond the scope of reason."

Feinstein said, it was a ''defining moment'' for the oversight of US spy agencies; adding that the CIA had removed documents from computers used by Senate Intelligence Committee staff members working on a report about the agency's detention programme.

The 6,300-page report had been the subject of of an acrimonious standoff between the committee and the agency, which said it contained many inaccuracies and wanted them corrected prior to release.

The senator's disclosures follow a week after  reports that the CIA had monitored computers used by her staff last year to determine how the committee could have gained access to the agency's internal review of the detention and interrogation programme that followed the 11 September terrorist attacks.

That programme was the most criticised part of the US government's response to the attacks.

According to Feinstein, the internal review bolstered the conclusions of the committee's still-classified report on the programme, which president Barack Obama officially ended in January 2009. Obama had criticised the programme during the 2008 presidential campaign.

According to commentators, for an intelligence agency already under fire over electronic surveillance and armed drone strikes, the escalating dispute with Feinstein, one of its closest congressional allies, could have grave implications.

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