Opinion
Published on March 5, 2014
Amidst ongoing controversy about the Administration’s domestic surveillance policies, there are new revelations that the CIA has been spying not on terrorists or foreign powers, but on…wait for it…its own overseers in Congress: the Senate intelligence committee. The allegations of unlawful domestic spying—the matter has been referred to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation—come as part of an ongoing effort by the CIA to undermine the committee’s investigation into its post-9/11 torture program.
A bit of background. Five years ago today, the Senate intelligence committee launched what Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), committee chair, has since called one of the most important oversight efforts in the history of the United States Senate: a comprehensive inquiry into the CIA’s use of torture and other abusive interrogation methods after 9/11.
The result of that inquiry is a 6,000-plus page report, based on a review of more than 6 million pages of official documents. Yet five years after the launch of this critical oversight effort, the report remains classified—its findings hidden from the American people.
That’s unacceptable—and it’s in large part due to the CIA’s unwillingness to fully cooperate with the committee, and the White House’s decision to completely defer to the CIA on the matter.
