Statement on Intel Committee’s CIA Detention, Interrogation Report

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) spoke on the Senate floor regarding the committee’s study on the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program:

“Over the past week, there have been numerous press articles written about the Intelligence Committee’s oversight review of the Detention and Interrogation Program of the CIA, specifically press attention has focused on the CIA’s intrusion and search of the Senate Select Committee’s computers as well as the committee’s acquisition of a certain internal CIA document known as the Panetta Review. I rise today to set the record straight and to provide a full accounting of the facts and history. 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 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.

The resulting staff report was chilling. The interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far harsher than the way the CIA had described them to us. As result of the staff’s 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 CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

In 2009, then-Vice Chairman Bond, then-Director Panetta, and I agreed in an exchange of letters that the CIA was to provide a ‘stand-alone computer system’ with a ‘network drive’ ‘segregated from CIA networks’ for the committee that would only be accessed by information technology personnel at the CIA -- who would ‘not be permitted to’ ‘share information from the system with other [CIA] personnel, except as otherwise authorized by the committee.’ It was this computer network that, notwithstanding our agreement with Director Panetta, was searched by the CIA this past January.”

[March 11]