CIA Vrs the Senate

While Dianne Feinstein has long protected the US Intelligence agencies in the Senate, she finally had enough when the CIA accused her staff of hacking while investigating waterboarding Post 9/11 by the CIA.  She took to the floor of the Senate for 90 minutes denouncing the CIA and their tactics, accusing them of violating the US Constitution.  Ron Wyden agreed in a statement released Tuesday, 3/11/2014.  His language regarding the CIA was very blunt.

In my judgment, the Intelligence Community leadership’s misleading statements on interrogation and many other issues has undermined their credibility. I will continue to work with my colleagues to ensure that the facts about the CIA’s detention and interrogation program are made public, so that the American people can make up their own minds about what happened and prevent the mistakes of the past from being repeated.

 Even Lindsey Graham rose in wrath according to CNN.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called the allegations "dangerous to a democracy," if it's substantiated that the CIA interfered with a congressional investigation.

"Heads should roll, people should go to jail, if it's true. ... I'm going to get briefed on it. If it is, the legislative branch should declare war on the CIA, if it's true," Graham said.

Ron Wyden, "The Culture of Misinformation"

Ron Wyden comments on the bill passed by the US Senate Intelligence Committee over his objections in an interview with The Oregonian yesterday.

After a dozen years on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ron Wyden doesn't get surprised easily.  But Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, recently managed it, by assuring the committee that the NSA planned to put bulk data it had collected on American citizens into a secure lockbox. 
Repeatedly, the Oregon senator recalls, Alexander had told the committee the NSA didn't hold data on American citizens.  "Now," says Wyden, "he said he's going to put into a lockbox the data that he's said he doesn't have."
"The culture of misinformation," he says, "has caused a lot of people to say, they're telling us stuff that just isn't true." Even the supersecret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, Wyden points out, has ruled that NSA has sometimes exceeded its legal and constitutional authority.
Wyden is introducing his own bill, very different from the committee's, that would prevent bulk data collection on American citizens, create an independent counsel to respond to NSA surveillance requests to the FISA court and eliminate "backdoor" breaking into social media systems. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has introduced similar legislation, and last week Leahy and Wyden formed an alliance, becoming co-sponsors of each others' bills.

Wyden also commented to The Guardian recently.

Ron Wyden said the bill maintains "business as usual" and "remains far from anything that could be considered meaningful reform".

Ron Wyden and the NSA Steamroller

“We’re just going to keep fighting this battle. It’s going to be a long one.”
Ron Wyden has his hands full in trying to rein in the NSA steamroller, which has powerful allies in Congress, such as Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Saxby Chambliss a Georgia Republican on the same committee.  Wyden has labeled their ilk the "Business as Usual Brigade", and true to form they steamrolled a NSA "reform" bill that just continues business as usual with a few weak tweaks to existing practice.

The bill is a direct challenge to one introduced Tuesday by senator Patrick Leahy that would end domestic phone-records collection. It was also opposed by leading intelligence committee member Mark Udall, who said it did not go far enough.
"The NSA's invasive surveillance of Americans' private information does not respect our constitutional values and needs fundamental reform, not incidental changes. Unfortunately, the bill passed by the Senate intelligence committee does not go far enough to address the NSA's overreaching domestic surveillance programs," Udall said.
Another Democratic member of the committee, Ron Wyden, said the bill maintains "business as usual" and "remains far from anything that could be considered meaningful reform". 
Wyden suggested that recent concern about NSA spying on foreign leaders had distracted from the real focus on mass domestic surveillance in the US. “The statements that American intelligence officials have made this week about collecting on the intentions of foreign leadership, that’s consistent with the understanding I’ve had for years, as a member of the intelligence committee,” he said.
“That has implications for foreign policy. My top priority is ending the mass surveillance, digital surveillance, on millions and millions of law-abiding Americans.”
Feinstein unexpectedly announced on Monday that she was “totally opposed” to the foreign leader spying of the sort the NSA conducts of German chancellor Angela Merkel. Feinstein has been a staunch supporter of the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.
“Americans are making it clear, that they never – repeat never – agreed to give up their constitutional liberties for the appearance of security,” Wyden said. “We’re just going to keep fighting this battle. It’s going to be a long one.”