"I come to the Senate floor reluctantly," she said; but "the increasing amount of inaccurate information circulating now cannot be allowed to stand unanswered." The root of the issue lies within two 'reports' – her committee's 6000+ report into the "CIA [torture and interrogation] program that never, never, never should have existed;" and the internal CIA comments, now known as the 'Panetta review,' that seem to support her committee's findings and go against the official CIA conclusions.
The CIA claims that the Panetta review was never provided to the committee, with anonymous suggestions that committee members had hacked the CIA systems or otherwise breached its firewalls to obtain the documents. "To be clear, the committee staff did not hack into CIA computers to obtain these documents, as has been suggested in the press," said Feinstein. "Further, we don't know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA or intentionally by a whistle-blower."
Either way, it is a serious issue damaging to the CIA. The Panetta review indicates that the CIA was itself privately in agreement with Feinstein's committee over the severity and probable illegality of its interrogation program; but publicly claimed its own review showed no wrongdoing. "This is important," said Feinstein. "Some of these important parts that the CIA now disputes in our committee study are clearly acknowledged in the CIA's own internal Panetta review. To say the least, this is puzzling. How can the CIA's official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own internal review?"
But the fate of the Panetta review is bound up with other complications. The committee's investigation was conducted under an agreement that it would be provided with its own secure computers by the CIA, and without interference from the CIA. It is now clear, however, that the CIA searched those computers on at least two occasions. Some of the documents provided to the committee mysteriously disappeared from the computers.
CIA director Brennan has distanced himself from the searches. "On January 15th, 2014, CIA Director Brennan requested an emergency meeting to inform me and Vice Chairman Chambliss that without prior notification or approval, CIA personnel had conducted a search -- that was John Brennan's word -- of the committee computers at the off-site facility." Publicly Brennan has gone further. "When the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong,” he said.
However, there can be no denying Feinstein's constitutional concerns, nor personal anger at the CIA. After the searches were reported, by the CIA itself, to the Justice Department, "the acting counsel general of the CIA filed a crimes report with the Department of Justice concerning the committee staff's actions... I view the acting counsel general's referral as a potential effort to intimidate this staff, and I am not taking this lightly." Throughout her speech she makes it clear that she felt the CIA had tried to make the investigation as difficult as possible.
It is clear that Feinstein considers the whole episode to be a fundamental challenge to the US constitution. "Besides the constitutional implications, the CIA search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance," she said.
"Based on what Director Brennan has informed us, I have grave concerns that the CIA's search may well have violated the separation of powers principle embodied in the United States Constitution, including the speech and debate clause. It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function... I believe it is critical," she concluded, "that the committee and the Senate reaffirm our oversight role and our independence under the Constitution of the United States."