After CIA agents hacked into the Senate Intelligence Committee’s computer network and accessed a report the Senate was preparing on the agency’s torture program, CIA Director John Brennan drafted an apology letter to Vice Chairman Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a report by VICE News reveals.
The revelation comes after VICE News filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit with MIT researcher Ryan Shapiro and obtained over 300 pages of documents related to the CIA spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “While the CIA turned over some records, it also withheld thousands of pages, citing nearly every exemption under FOIA,” reported VICE News.
Brennan’s draft apology letter was written 10 days after CIA Inspector General David Buckley warned that CIA employees who hacked into the Senate network may have broken federal laws.
“I recently received a briefing on the IG’s findings, and want to inform you that the investigation found support for your concern that CIA staff had improperly accessed the SSCI shared drive on the RDINet when conducting a limited search for CIA privileged documents,” the letter read.
“In particular, the OIG judged that agency officers’ access to the SSCI shared drive was inconsistent with the common understanding reached in 2009 between the committee and the agency regarding access to RDINet. Consequently, I apologize for the actions of CIA officers,” wrote Brennan, who promised to fix “the shortcomings that this report has revealed.”
The CIA accessed the Senate staffers’ network to see how they had obtained documents on the torture program that were known as the Panetta Review. The CIA claimed those documents were privileged and that the Senate staffers must have hacked into the CIA’s drive. Staffers had actually found the documents through a Google search tool.
Feinstein deemed the CIA’s hack and accessing of Senate documents crucial to the torture report an egregious disregard for the separation between executive and legislative branches and demanded an apology on the record. But Brennan’s apology letter would remain only a draft — unsigned and unsent.
After the CIA released the FOIA documents to VICE, it said Brennan’s draft letter was accidentally released and requested that VICE refrain from publishing it. “We declined the CIA’s request,” VICE said.
