Did the CIA spy on Senate staffers to protect itself?
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For four years, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been working on a report about the CIA's clandestine detention and interrogation programs. The report, according to accounts from The New York Times and McClatchy, offers a withering portrayal of the spy agency's actions, suggesting they amounted to torture yet failed to produce valuable intelligence. The report is apparently so damning that the CIA, believing committee staffers had accessed unauthorized documents while conducting their research, may have spied on those staffers while they worked.
From McClatchy:
The committee determined earlier this year that the CIA monitored computers — in possible violation of an agreement against doing so — that the agency had provided to intelligence committee staff in a secure room at CIA headquarters that the agency insisted they use to review millions of pages of top-secret reports, cables and other documents, according to people with knowledge. [McClatchy]
That revelation came shortly after Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) on Tuesday said in a letter to President Obama that the CIA had taken "unprecedented action against the Committee." Udall did not say in his letter what that action was.
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The CIA's inspector general is reviewing the allegations.
