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CIA-Senate dispute 101: 9 questions about who's spying on whom

Did the Central Intelligence Agency spy illegally on Senate Intelligence Committee computers? Here are nine questions and answers about a complex story that starts with waterboarding and ends in a secret CIA facility in northern Virginia.

7. When did the fighting start?

In late 2013, Feinstein requested that the CIA hand over a full copy of the Panetta report. It declined, saying among other things that it was an internal work review product, not a final document. Then in January of this year, CIA Director John Brennan informed top Intelligence panel lawmakers that the CIA had conducted a search of the committee’s computer network at its CIA workroom – to determine if staffers had already seen the sensitive Panetta report and, if so, how they got it.

Yet the CIA has not asked the committee directly if it has had access to this review, according to Feinstein.

“In place of asking any questions, the CIA’s unauthorized search of the committee computers was followed by an allegation, which we have now seen repeated anonymously in the press, that the committee staff had somehow obtained the document through unauthorized or criminal means,” Feinstein said.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

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