Skip to footer

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.

6. Why is the Panetta report so special?

It’s important because it contradicts some of the CIA’s other statements on enhanced interrogation, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman.

Eventually the Senate panel produced a mammoth, 6,300-page report on the interrogation program. It is scathing, reportedly. It’s still classified. Staffers submitted it to the CIA for the agency’s response at the end of 2012, setting off months of acrimony between the two sides as the agency responded to what it says are factual and analytical inaccuracies.

But the CIA’s official response to the report is belied by Panetta report contents, Feinstein said Tuesday.

“Some of these important parts that the CIA now disputes in our committee study are clearly acknowledged in the CIA’s own internal Panetta review. To say the least, this is puzzling. How can the CIA’s official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own internal review?” Feinstein said on the Senate floor.

6 of 9
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.