Senator and CIA chief renew history of bitter spats
Published 9:49 am Friday, December 12, 2014
WASHINGTON — Their disputes over who spied on whom and censoring the Senate’s scathing torture report are history. But the personal feud between Sen. Dianne Feinstein and CIA Director John Brennan may only be getting worse.
Relations between the outgoing Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman and America’s top spy appeared to hit a new low Thursday as Feinstein live-tweeted comments contradicting Brennan as he publicly addressed her panel’s sweeping allegations of CIA wrongdoing. While Feinstein later praised Brennan for accepting many of her inquiry’s conclusions, the damage was done.
“#ReadTheReport” was the refrain from Feinstein as Brennan held a rare news conference at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. She berated the CIA chief for suggesting, contrary to her report, that the agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” were legal and may have helped lead to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Brennan acknowledged CIA officers did “abhorrent” things and were unprepared to run a detention program after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Yet he was hardly praiseworthy of Feinstein and fellow Democrats, calling it “lamentable” they interviewed no CIA personnel to ask, “What were you thinking?” He called the investigation “flawed.”
For the two main protagonists in this week’s drama, bickering is nothing new.