John Brennan Needs to Leave the CIA, One Way or Another
Mother Jones
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What’s going on with the CIA hacking into Senate computers? Here’s a very brief, very telescoped timeline to get you up to speed:
2009: The Senate Intelligence Committee begins working on an investigation of CIA torture during the Bush administration. CIA Director Leon Panetta secretly orders a parallel internal review.
December 2012: The Senate finishes a draft of its report and submits it to the CIA for review and declassification.
March 2013: John Brennan takes over from Panetta as CIA director.
June 2013: The CIA issues a blistering response to the Senate report, vigorously disputing its conclusions that the CIA routinely engaged in brutal torture of detainees.
December 2013: Sen. Mark Udall reveals the existence of the “Panetta Review”—actually a series of memos—written at the same time Senate staffers were collecting material for their report. He suggests that it “conflicts with the official C.I.A. response to the committee’s report.” In plainer English: the CIA lied about what its own review concluded.
The CIA, apparently under the impression that Senate staffers had gotten access to the Panetta Review improperly—and had removed copies from their secure reading room at CIA headquarters—hacks into the computers used by Senate staffers. As part of their secret investigation, they read emails and do a keyword search to find out how the Senate staffers had gotten access to the memos.
January 2014: The CIA presents the results of its investigation to the Senate Intelligence Committee and accuses its staffers of misconduct.
March 2014: Sen. Dianne Feinstein launches a blistering attack on the CIA for hacking into the Senate computers in violation of an explicit agreement that they wouldn’t do so. Brennan counterattacks vigorously. “As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth,” he says.
Yesterday: The CIA inspector general releases a report admitting that Senate staffers had done nothing wrong and that five CIA staffers did indeed hack into Senate computers. In other words, Panetta was very badly mistaken in March when he loudly insisted that nothing of the sort had happened.
So then: The CIA lied about the conclusions of its own internal review. The Senate found out about this. The CIA then hacked into Senate computers to find out how they had discovered the incriminating evidence. Then they lied again, denying that they had done this. David Corn lays out two possible explanations for Brennan’s misleading statements in March:
Either he knew that his subordinates had spied on the Senate staffers but had claimed otherwise, or he had not been told the truth by underlings and had unwittingly provided a false assertion to the public. Neither scenario reflects well upon the fellow who is supposed to be in-the-know about the CIA’s activities—especially its interactions with Congress on a rather sensitive subject.
Nope. Either way, he ought to resign or be fired. This is simply not excusable behavior in a public official.
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