Despite a number of growing foreign and domestic threats over the summer, the CIA admitted that they had been using their resources to spy on elected officials in the Senate. Now, insiders are alleging that it’s not just what they did that is the problem, but how they went about it.
A new piece by the Huffington Post reports that CIA agents “impersonated Senate staffers in order to gain access to Senate communications” that related to an ongoing Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the agency’s interrogation and detention programs.
In July, an internal investigation by the CIA confirmed that their department wrongfully hacked into a computer network used by staffers for the Senate Intelligence Committee, who were compiling a five-year-long, multi-million dollar study, referred to as the Senate’s “so-called torture report, a probe into the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation program.”
“If people knew the details of what they actually did to hack into the Senate computers to go search for the torture document, jaws would drop. It’s straight out of a movie,” one Senate staffer familiar with the incident told the Huffington Post.
Not all of HuffPo’s sources felt that the impersonation allegations were true. Another source told them that the idea of CIA agents posing as staffers was “clearly untrue.”
“CIA simply attempted to determine if its side of the firewall could have been accessed through the Google search tool. CIA did not use administrator access to examine [Intelligence Committee] work product,” the source said.
Previously, the CIA had maintained that the “improper access” resulted from a security breach investigation after Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) staff came into possession of an internal CIA document which they were not entitled to have. Feinstein is the chairman of the intelligence committee.
While CIA Director John Brennan offered a formal apology to Feinstein for the incident, he did not tenure his resignation. The White House has repeatedly defended Brennan from calls for his resignation.
The Huffington Post also pointed out that the White House might be more invested in this case than previously indicated.
White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is personally negotiating how much of the Senate torture report will be redacted, according to HuffPo.
The White House has publicly stated that they will not be choosing sides in the CIA vs. Senate face-off, but McDonough’s role makes that seem questionable.
The White House confirmed McDonough’s involvement in the negotiations, but did not offer any further details.
