Sen Dianne Feinstein's outspoken criticism of "CIA interference" in a congressional investigation is in sharp contrast to her defense of an intelligence-gathering community that some say tramples on civil liberties.
Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has fretted that the public was losing confidence "in the dedicated men and women of our intelligence community" because of a string of disclosures that she said often lacked important context. In particular, she has defended the National Security Agency's collection of massive amounts of phone records, revealed in detail by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden
Now the California Democrat has turned critical, claiming that Congress was the target of intelligence-gathering. In a Senate floor speech yesterday she accused the CIA of criminal activity in searching a computer network set up so that lawmakers could review top secret documents provided for an investigation into the use of harsh interrogation techniques.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which often has been a critic of Feinstein, called her speech a "forceful, necessary and historic defense of the constitutional principle of separation of powers."
"After so many years of Congress being unable or unwilling to assert its authority over the CIA, Sen. Feinstein today began to reclaim the authority of Congress as a check on the executive branch," Christopher Alders, senior legislative counsel for the ACLU, said.
Over the past year Feinstein has credited the intelligence community's collection of phone call "metadata" with stopping about a dozen terrorist attacks in the United States. She said lawmakers were briefed on the data collection, and the overwhelming majority of records are never looked at, and are regularly destroyed.
