CIA vs. Senate: Who Is Obama Protecting? (What's Feinstein's Revelations About?)--Paul Jay/RNN Asks

[KoKo]

(Incredible Interview where Paul Jay asks the Questions that others aren't asking about Feinstein's Revelations. What I got is he's wondering "WHY NOW does Feinstein speak up?" which (given what some of us) remember from past decades is an IMPORTANT QUESTION. We might be headed for inquiries about this in ways we never thought)


CIA vs. Senate: Who Is Obama Protecting? (What's Feinstein's Revelations About?)--Paul Jay/RNN Asks

Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein co-directs the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program, which seeks to advance effective national security policies that respect constitutional values and the rule of law. Before joining the Brennan Center, Liza served as counsel to Senator Russell Feingold, Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as prominent outlets such as Roll Call, the National Law Journal, Salon, POLITICO, Time, and the Huffington Post. She has appeared on national television and radio shows including the The Rachel Maddow Show, The Today Show, All In with Chris Hayes, Up with Steve Kornacki, PBS NewsHour, and National Public Radio's Morning Edition and On The Media. Liza graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Hon. Michael Daly Hawkins on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.


Transcript AT SITE:
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN:

Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.In January, according to Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the head of the CIA, John Brennan, came to her and told her some of her staffers may have broken the law by getting access to secret documents that had been revealed to Senate investigators but, according to Brennan, shouldn't have been shown to Senate staffers, and that might be illegal. Why did he make this trip? Why did he tell Dianne Feinstein this? Because it led to Dianne Feinstein coming to the conclusion and finding out that the CIA had actually been spying on Senate computers, and had even removed records from those--and files from those computers.

Now joining us to give us some background and discuss all of this and joining us now from New York is Elizabeth Goitein. She's codirector of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.Thanks for joining us very much, Elizabeth.ELIZABETH GOITEIN, CO-DIR., LIBERTY AND NAT'L SECURITY PROGRAM, BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE:

Thank you.JAY: So why the heck does Brennan go and say this to Feinstein? I mean, look at the hornets nest he let loose.GOITEIN: That's right. Well, he believes or the CIA believes that the Senate staff, the committee staff, may have committed a crime in some way, shape, or form. We don't really know the details of that, because John Brennan went to Senator Feinstein, he did not go to the American public. All we're getting is leaks, essentially, from CIA officials to reporters. But from what we can piece together, the CIA believes and it filed a crimes report with the Justice Department that Senate committee staff, while investigating the CIA's torture program, in some way it got unauthorized access to a document or a set of documents which was a draft CIA review of the very same torture program.And what's so interesting about all of this is that this draft review basically said a lot of the same things, it's been reported, as the Senate's own review, namely, the brutality of these so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were not justified by any security benefit. The CIA does not like the fact that Senate staffers obtained these draft reports, and the CIA believes that this was unauthorized.There's a very different story coming out of the Senate Intelligence Committee, though.JAY: Yeah. Dianne Feinstein, in her statement on March 11, essentially said this is actually all meant just to intimidate the Senate committee, never--and she also went on to say that much of it, of what the CIA has done is likely to be illegal. Here's a few quotes from her speech:

Full TRANSCRIPT at the SITE:

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11598