By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 9th, 2014
The CIA’s internal watchdog has asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into charges that the Agency may have conducted illegal spying operations on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.
The Senate and House Intelligence Committees exist to provide a congressional oversight of the federal bureaus and agencies which collect intelligence for U.S. officials.
It is illegal for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) to spy on Americans – and no doubt the possible crime is made more heinous when such alleged acts may have been performed upon the very congressional panels set up to oversee the intelligence community.
In fact, Congress established the intelligence panels in the 1970s after numerous spying abuses – especially those which occurred under the Nixon Administration – came to light.
For months, the current rancor between the congressional intelligence panels and the CIA has been building over one especially sensitive subject.
“The Central Intelligence Agency’s attempt to keep secret the details of a defunct detention and interrogation program” has created an increasingly tense standoff “between the agency and members of Congress and [has] led to an investigation by the C.I.A.’s internal watchdog into the conduct of agency employees,” stated The New York Times on March 4th.
Members of Congress complained to the CIA’s inspector general that Agency employees were prying into a Senate committee study on the former “detention and interrogation program,” unnamed federal officials told the Times.
“C.I.A. officers went as far as gaining access to computer networks used by the committee to carry out its investigation…according to one official interviewed in recent days,” added The New York Times.
The possibility of Agency misconduct led to an inspector general’s inquiry. The CIA watchdog apparently found the charges serious enough to request a Justice Department criminal investigation into the matter, according to McClatchy news service.
The Senate panel’s massive 6,300-page report on the CIA’s former interrogation techniques remains classified. But the committee found that the Agency’s former ‘interrogations’ of presumed terrorists revealed few actual facts.
The Obama Administration put an end to the controversial ‘interrogations’ – which Human Rights Watch has flatly called “torture and cruelty” – shortly after assuming office in 2009.
And now, some members of Congress are eager to put its findings on the CIA’s former ‘interrogation techniques’ before the American people.
“At a moment when our country is once again debating the efficacy and morality of so-called ‘enhanced interrogation’ practices, this report has the potential to set the record straight once and for all,” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has stated.
Other lawmakers, like Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) – who sits on the Senate intelligence panel – appear to have gone farther. Udall on March 4th wrote an impassioned letter to President Obama, asking him to declassify the entire report.
The senator also vaguely alluded to the alleged spying activities of the CIA.
“As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the Committee in relation to the internal CIA review, and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee’s oversight responsibilities and for our democracy,” stated Udall’s letter.
“It is essential that the Committee be able to do its oversight work—consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of powers—without the CIA posing impediments or obstacles as it is today,” added the senator.
Christopher Anders, who serves as an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) legislative counsel, told National Journal that if the Senate panel really was the target of a CIA spying operation, the action could only be seen as an “outrageous violation of separation of powers.”
“CIA surveillance of Congress would be another sign that the intelligence community has come to believe that they are above the law, and should get only deference from the other branches of government, not the meaningful oversight that’s required by the Constitution,” Anders told the Journal.
“Checks and balances – especially for agencies like the CIA and NSA that have many secret operations – are essential for democratic government. At the very least, these reports should spur the committee to vote quickly for the declassification and release of its full report into the CIA’s torture program so the American people can see what it is that the CIA is so eager to hide,” he added.
