Senate Intelligence head accuses CIA of undermining US “constitutional framework”
Barry Grey ■ In an extraordinary speech delivered Tuesday on the floor of the US Senate, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, accused the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of spying on committee staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s program of detention, interrogation and torture under President George W. Bush. || Feinstein’s speech was all the more remarkable since she is one of the most slavish defenders of the intelligence agencies and is herself, along with the congressional leadership of both parties and the Obama White House, complicit in the criminal and anti-democratic practices she claimed to be opposing. Feinstein has unreservedly defended mass spying by the National Security Agency and joined in the official witch-hunt against whistle-blowers such as Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. The fact that she felt obliged to go to the floor of the Senate and charge CIA leaders with impeachable offenses testifies to the increasingly naked manner in which the US security agencies are dispensing with even the trappings of democracy and asserting dictatorial control. [...] What Feinstein did not mention was the Obama administration’s exoneration in 2012 of CIA officials responsible for destroying the tapes. Nor did she note the suppression in 2004 of Abu Ghraib photos by the Pentagon, with the support of both parties in Congress; Obama’s reneging in 2009 on his pledge to release the suppressed photos; or her own refusal to pursue charges against Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for lying to her committee last March when he was asked if the NSA was collecting private data on millions of Americans.
Independent.ie: CIA hacked into Senate computers to conceal 'brutal details of torture'
The Guardian: Feinstein accuses CIA of 'intimidating' Senate staff over torture report