Transcript: Sen. Dianne Feinstein says CIA searched Intelligence Committee computers

Tuesday, March 11, 10:32 AM

... The origin of this study, the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, began operations in 2002, though it was not until September, 2006 that members of the intelligence committee, other than the chairman and the vice chairman were briefed. In fact, we were briefed by then-CIA Director Hayden only hours before President Bush disclosed the program to the public ...

As a result of the staff initial report, I proposed and then-Vice Chairman Bond agreed and the committee overwhelmingly approved that the committee conduct an expansive and full review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program ...

After a series of meetings, I learned that on two occasions CIA personnel electronically removed committee access to CIA documents after providing them to the committee. This included roughly 870 documents or page of documents that were removed in February 2010; and secondly, roughly another 50 that were removed in mid-May 2010. This was done without the knowledge or approval of committee members or staff, and in violation of our written agreements. Further, this type of behavior would not have been possible had the CIA allowed the committee to conduct the review of documents here in the Senate. In short, this was the exact sort of CIA interference in our investigation that we sought to avoid at the outset ...

At some point in 2010, committee staff searching the documents that had been made available found draft versions of what is now called the internal Panetta review. We believe these documents were written by CIA personnel to summarize and analyze the materials that had been provided to the committee for its review. The Panetta review documents were no more highly classified than other information we had received for our investigation. In fact, the documents appeared based on the same information already provided to the committee. What was unique and interesting about the internal documents was not their classification level but rather their analysis and acknowledgement of significant CIA wrongdoing ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/transcript-sen-dianne-feinstein-says-cia-searched-intelligence-committee-computers/2014/03/11/200dc9ac-a928-11e3-8599-ce7295b6851c_story.html