The CIA has launched an internal review after members of Congress complained that the CIA may have been monitoring Senate Intelligence Committee staffers who worked on a report about the agency’s detention and interrogation program, according to reports.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) confirmed to the New York Times on Tuesday that the CIA had begun an internal review but offered few other details. McClatchy reported that the CIA Inspector General’s office had also referred the matter to the Justice Department, which the Times was unable to confirm.
As people who have read the classified report described it to the Times, the 6,000-page study on the detention and interrogation program under the Bush administration “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.”
The CIA had provided computers in a secure room at its headquarters for Senate Intelligence Committee staffers to review top-secret documents related to the program, people with knowledge of the matter told McClatchy. The committee then determined earlier this year that the agency may have violated an agreement in monitoring those computers.
The specifics of the investigation are unclear since it deals with classified material. But as the Times pointed out, it marks a rare moment of public dispute about oversight between the agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has taken heat in the past for defending surveillance programs.
