CIA apologizes for spying on Senate

CIA Director John Brennan has apologized to Senate Intelligence Committee leaders after the agency’s inspector general found employees had acted improperly when they searched Senate computers earlier this year, as they probed for information on the legislative body’s report on torture. 

Agency spokesman Dean Boyd said in an email to The Associated Press on Thursday that Brennan had convened an accountability board that would investigate the conduct of the CIA officers and discipline them if necessary. The report was carried out by the CIA's inspector general (IG).

Brennan informed committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the senior Republican on the committee, "and apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers as described in the [inspector general's] report," Boyd said.

Feinstein released a statement Thursday saying the apology took place on Tuesday, when Brennan revealed the results of the IG report. 

"Director Brennan apologized for these actions and submitted the IG report to an accountability board. These are positive first steps," Feinstein said, adding that Brennan's admission confirmed her earlier stated suspicions of CIA snooping. 

"This IG report corrects the record and it is my understanding that a declassified report will be made available to the public shortly."

The Justice Department has so far declined to pursue criminal charges against the employees, who searched the computers for information gathered in the course of a Senate investigation into the CIA's interrogation techniques.

The CIA inspector general concluded that "some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between" the committee and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to a shared classified computer network, Boyd said.

The development was the subject of wildly different characterizations by sources on both sides of the dispute, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to go beyond official statements.

Senate aides familiar with the matter said the CIA used classified "hacking tools" and created a fake user account in an effort to retrieve documents the CIA believed the Senate staffers had improperly accessed.

However, an official familiar with the inspector general's report disputed that hacking tools were used, and said there was no malicious intent behind the CIA actions.

The White House in the next few days is expected to declassify the long-awaited summary of a Senate committee study of a CIA program that used "enhanced interrogations" and secret prisons to extract information from captured fighters, several officials familiar with the matter said.

Wire services