President Obama's choice to lead the intelligence agency has undermined core checks and balances with impunity.
The Atlantic
Conor Friedersdorf
Dec. 23, 2014
This is the story of John Brennan's CIA spying on Congress and getting away with it.
Last March, Senator Dianne Feinstein accused the CIA of spying on the Senate intelligence committee as it labored to finalize its report on the torture of prisoners. “I have grave concerns that the CIA’s search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution,†she said. “I have asked for an apology and a recognition that this CIA search of computers used by its oversight committee was inappropriate. I have received neither.â€
CIA Director John Brennan denied the charge. “Nothing could be further from the truth,†he said. “We wouldn’t do that. That’s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we’d do.†It would be months before his denial was publicly proved false. "An internal investigation by the C.I.A. has found that its officers penetrated a computer network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee in preparing its damning report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program," The New York Times reported. "The report by the agency’s inspector general also found that C.I.A. officers read the emails of the Senate investigators and sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department based on false information."
More...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief-history-of-the-cias-unpunished-spying-on-the-senate/384003/
