The CIA’s Espionage and Obama’s Secrets

http://watchingamerica.com/News/235823/the-cias-espionage-and-obamas-secrets/

Accused of having spied on the Senate, the CIA is asking the president for help. Obama must decide what to do. Otherwise, there is the risk of new revelations coming out …

The CIA’s Espionage and Obama’s Secrets
Panorma, Italy
By Michele Zurieni
Translated By Sabrina Chapman
12 March 2014
Edited by Gillian Palmer

When we enter the labyrinthine game of mirrors that is politics and espionage, there is the risk of finding ourselves in front of a door that doesn’t open. The right path is either next to us or behind us. But the shadows, the lights and the reflected images have been misleading. Constantly moving, even so, sooner or later we will find it and leave — maybe after we have found another door, one that we were not looking for. The U.S. Senate, the CIA and the White House are all struggling with this game. It is up to us to work out where it is leading.

Dispute between the Senate and the CIA

Since yesterday, a serious constitutional crisis looms over Washington. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, has accused the CIA of spying on employees of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, trying to steal documents and putting undue pressure on her staff. This is the culmination of an almost year-long arm-wrestle between Langley and the governmental organization that has investigated the CIA’s activities since 9/11. But it is only another quarter of the match; it is not the end.

The point of contention is a 6,300-page report that the committee drafted over three years, from 2009 to 2012. The report was completed in December 2012 and approved with a majority vote: nine in favor and six against. After this vote, the CIA sent a 120-page memorandum to contest the foundations of the report: Years of coercive methods in the fight against terrorism have not produced a single bit of (useful) information for Intelligence. Kidnappings, torture, imprisonments: all useless. To defeat the enemy, more is (was) needed.

The Report on the CIA’s Prisons

The committee has always refused to change these foundations. It has made them on the basis of thousands of CIA documents contained in a classified database. Names; dates; events; methods used in interrogations. Paperwork that should have only been in the hands of those at the head of the CIA instead ended up on the computers of senators. The pressure started then. Langley sought to find those responsible for these documents, telling the committee’s staff members that they committed a crime the moment they came into possession of them. The dispute had been going on behind closed doors when Dianne Feinstein decided to make it public.