The CIA lied: agency admits it hacked Senate computers to snoop on torture investigations

CIA Director John Brennan.

After months of lying to lawmakers and the American public, the CIA today finally admitted it hacked into the Senate staffers’ computers to monitor their investigations of the intelligence agency’s post-9/11 programs of harsh interrogation (we prefer to just call it torture) and a global network of secret prisons.

The revelation contradicts what the CIA previously told lawmakers. In other words, they literally lied to America.

From McClatchy, which broke the news first:

CIA employees improperly accessed computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a report on the agency’s now defunct detention and interrogation program, an internal CIA investigation has determined.

Findings of the investigation by the CIA Inspector General’s Office “include a judgment that some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between SSCI (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) and the CIA in 2009,” CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement.

The statement represented an admission to charges by the panel’s chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the CIA intruded into the computers her staff used to compile the soon-to-be released report on the agency’s use of harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons during the Bush administration.

More coverage: the National Journal, New York Times.

Happier days: Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) with John Brennan, CIA Director, on Capitol Hill in Washington January 31, 2013. [REUTERS/Yuri Gripas]