Washington: The head of the US Senate Intelligence Committee said on Tuesday the CIA improperly searched a computer network established for lawmakers to investigate of allegations of CIA abuse in a Bush-era detention and interrogation program. She said the search may have been illegal and has been referred to the Justice Department.
The accusation by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is the latest storm to hit the US intelligence community, which has been reeling from former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden`s revelations about its mass surveillance programs.
While the monitoring outlined by Feinstein appears far more limited than in the NSA scandal, the backlash could be significant could because it involved the panel that oversees the CIA`s programs and funding.
The criticism by Feinstein, who spoke at length on the Senate floor, is particularly biting because she has been one of the main defenders of intelligence agencies at a time that they have been sharply criticized at home and abroad.
Feinstein, a Democrat, said she has sought an apology but said the CIA has been silent.
At issue is whether the CIA violated an agreement made with the Senate Intelligence Committee about monitoring the committee`s use of CIA computers.
The CIA provided the computers to congressional staffers in a secure room at its headquarters so panel could review millions of pages of top secret documents in the course of its investigation into the CIA`s use of torture during the Bush administration.
Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee completed the 6,000-page interrogation report last year and are revising it with CIA comments, before asking the White House to declassify its 300-plus-page executive summary, and its conclusions.
When the report was first approved by Democrats on the committee in December 2012, Feinstein said her staffers reviewed 6 million pages of records from the CIA and other sources, and came to the conclusion that the detention and interrogation program yielded little or no significant intelligence.
