Remember when it looked like the Senate committee that oversees the CIA was writing the notorious CIA Torture Report, and caught the CIA searching their Senate bosses’ files to find out what they knew?
Apparently, CIA Director John Brennan doesn’t. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday, Brennan pitched a tantrum when Senator Ron Wyden [D-OR], who sits on the Committee, asked him to account for spying on his bosses. The Director snarls at his boss, insisting that nothing bad happened, that Wyden shouldn’t be talking about it, and so on — saying everything, in fact, except, “Sorry, it won’t happen again.”
Brennan: Yes, I think you mischaracterize both their comments as well as what’s in those reports. And I apologized to the Chairman and the Vice Chairman about the de minimis access and inappropriate access that CIA officers made to five emails or so of Senate staffers during that investigation. And I apologized to them for that very specific inappropriate action that was taken as part of a very reasonable investigative action. But do not say that we spied on Senate computers or files. We did not do that. We were fulfilling our responsibilities.
CIA Director Freaks Out After Senator Wyden Points Out How The CIA Spied On The Senate
[Mike Masnick/Techdirt]