Sen. Dianne Feinstein is one of the most stalwart supporters in Congress of the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance activity. She’s also leading an epic constitutional showdown with the CIA over torture.
Those closest to the California Democrat don’t see a disconnect. The longtime defense hawk takes her job of overseeing the intelligence community seriously and says the CIA shouldn’t get away with hiding its darkest secrets behind a national security shield.
What’s more, the CIA lied to Congress and tried to cover its tracks, triggering a test of wills with a senator known for steely resolve.
For the past five years, Feinstein has relentlessly investigated charges that the CIA and other agencies tortured terrorism suspects in secret overseas facilities, breaking U.S. laws and international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions.
When the CIA fiercely resisted, Feinstein dug in, locking horns with CIA Director John Brennan in the most public battle between the agency and a sitting senator in recent history.
At 81, Feinstein is uniquely suited for this battle. She’s the oldest serving senator in one of the upper chamber’s most demanding jobs, leading the Intelligence Committee, the panel at the center of the country’s counter-terror and covert operations.
She can afford to be independent and doesn’t have to worry about re-election if she decides to run again. In 2012, she won the most votes of any senator in history in the heavily Democratic and densely populated state of California.
Over the past year, she has also crossed swords with the administration on everything from the swap of five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to Obamacare’s troubled rollout and snooping on foreign leaders.
“She believes in the separation of powers, and she’s a fighter,” said former Rep. Jane Harman, a fellow California Democrat who now is president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center. “It’s in her DNA.”
Harman, who was ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee during the Sept. 11 attacks, considers Feinstein a dear friend and mentor.
She recalls how they met when Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco in the late 1970s after serving on the city’s board of supervisors. Feinstein was in her office down the hall when an ex-supervisor she knew shot and killed city Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay activist, and Mayor George Moscone in 1978. Feinstein found them dead on the floor.
Feinstein succeeded Moscone as mayor a week later. It was just months after her second husband, neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, died of colon cancer. She married Richard Blum, an investment banker, in 1980, making her one of the wealthiest members of Congress with a reported current net worth of $45.4 million.
“She saw serious adversity back then — her beloved husband died at an early age, she saw [her colleagues] shot and die and had a role of enormous importance at a pretty young age,” Harman said. “I don’t know whether life shaped her or she shaped life, but the combination is seriously impressive.”
Throughout her long Senate tenure, Feinstein and interventionist Republicans have mostly seen eye-to-eye on national security. She has staunchly defended the NSA’s sweeping surveillance policies, labeling former NSA contractor Edward Snowden a traitor for his leaks about surveillance programs. Feinstein has, however, objected to activities such as spying on American allies including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
On the issue of torture, she stands more alone, with only a few outspoken supporters on the right such as Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul.
Her tug of war over classified information took an angry turn in March when Feinstein accused the CIA in a 38-minute floor speech of spying on the computers of Senate staff.
She said it “may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function.”
In early August the CIA inspector general backed up her claims, and Brennan was forced to apologize to her, though he remains securely ensconced in his post.
More recently Feinstein took her fight directly to President Obama, accusing him of further delaying the release of the report’s executive summary by allowing the CIA to redact it so heavily that it made no sense. Early last month, she put off its release indefinitely to negotiate the redactions.
The two sides made progress during Congress’ August recess and may release the report in mid-September, sources say.
White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden is quick to say that the administration “values our strong partnership with Feinstein,” but the feud with Brennan, Obama’s CIA chief, has earned her some important detractors.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the committee’s ranking member, in early August called the report an “ideologically motivated, distorted recounting of events.”
He plans to release a minority report expected to argue that the interrogation techniques in question led to the disruption of several terrorism plots and even helped find and kill Osama bin Laden.
John Yoo, the Bush White House lawyer who authored memos that provided the legal backing for harsh interrogation techniques, accused Feinstein of “naivete.”
Now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Yoo said Feinstein and her supporters weren’t intelligence operators forced to make “heat-of-the-moment decisions.”
“The men and women who were in those positions and responsible have testified that the interrogations prevented terrorist attacks,” he wrote in an email to the Washington Examiner. “They are not liars.”
Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from 2004 to 2007, also backed the interrogation practices after the Sept. 11 attacks on the twin towers. But he admires Feinstein for her tough CIA oversight.
“I applaud her for it,” he said. “I think she’s doing exactly the right thing. The intelligence community just needs aggressive and stringent oversight from Congress.”
