“The C.I.A. just went and searched the committee’s computers,” Senator Dianne Feinstein said on Tuesday, in a speech on the Senate floor. She accused the Agency of sabotaging the oversight efforts of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which she chairs, and thus the separation of powers; engaging in “a potential effort to intimidate this staff,” by accusing them of “hacking”; breaking its word; and maybe breaking the law. “Besides the constitutional implications, the C.I.A. search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the C.I.A. from conducting domestic searches or surveillance,” she said. The C.I.A. spied on the Senate, and the senator is angry.
She may be about to get angrier. As it happened, John Brennan, the director of the C.I.A., was scheduled to appear at the Council on Foreign Relations soon after she spoke. Feinstein had described an “emergency meeting” where she was informed that “without prior notification or approval, C.I.A. personnel had conducted a search—that was John Brennan’s word,” of her staff’s computers. She said that she’d sent him letters with questions and had got no answers. At C.F.R., Andrea Mitchell, of NBC, asked Brennan about Feinstein’s complaints. “As far as the allegations of, you know, C.I.A. hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth,” Brennan replied. “We wouldn’t do that. I mean that’s, that’s, that’s—just beyond the scope of reason.”
“She says that there are potentially illegal and unconstitutional breaches by the C.I.A.,” Mitchell said.
