The CIA’s ludicrous spying charade: Here’s what you need to know about John Brennan’s angry Senate tirade

“Do not say that we spied on Senate computers or files,” CIA Director John Brennan said testily in a Senate Intelligence Committee Threat Assessment hearing on Tuesday, leaning forward and shaking his head with almost every word. “We did not do that. We were fulfilling our responsibilities.”

Brennan was objecting to Sen. Ron Wyden’s characterization as “spying” of a controversial CIA search of files relating to an investigation of the agency’s torture program. In order to understand the nuances of this distinction, a little backstory is necessary.

In 2009, the CIA had set up an offsite server that contained files relevant to its infamous torture program, to be used by the Department of Justice as well as Intelligence Committee (SSCI) staffers. The server had a dedicated portion for SSCI staffers that CIA officials weren’t supposed to access. In 2013, during a period when CIA and SSCI were arguing about the veracity of some conclusions made in the draft torture report, SSCI staffers found a document, which the CIA now claims shouldn’t have been accessible to SSCI staffers, proving that the agency itself actually agreed with the report’s conclusions in an internal investigation conducted all the way back in 2009.

In early 2014, CIA investigators tried to find out how the staffers had obtained the damning document. (They obtained it, as Vice reported last year, by using a search tool provided by a CIA contractor, and as such any error in question belonged to the CIA.) In doing so, CIA investigators violated a promise not to access any of the server files dedicated to Senate staffers.

Brennan’s insistence that the spy agency had not spied on the committee that oversees its actions took place amid a testy six-minute exchange during which Wyden attempted to get Brennan to agree that CIA would never again spy on the committee....

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/11/the_cias_ludicrous_spying_charade_heres_what_you_need_to_know_about_john_brennans_angry_senate_tirade/

CIA Director George Tenet Facilitated 9/11

After becoming Director of the CIA (DCI) in 1997, George Tenet did what Louis Freeh had done after his appointment as FBI Director. He began to cultivate close personal relationships with the rulers of Saudi Arabia. Like Freeh, Tenet grew especially close to Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Bandar and Tenet often met at Bandar’s home near Washington yet Tenet did not share information from those meetings with his own officers who were handling Saudi issues at the Agency. The CIA’s Saudi specialists only learned about Tenet’s dealings with the Saudi authorities inadvertently, through their Saudi contacts. It seems that Tenet was operating within a network that surpassed the interests of the American public. Therefore the unsolved crimes of 9/11, attributed largely to young men from Saudi Arabia, should be considered in light of Tenet’s actions.

As Deputy Director for the CIA, in 1996, Tenet had worked to install one of his closest friends and confidants, John Brennan, as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. Brennan is now the DCI but, in his previous role, Brennan often communicated directly with Tenet, avoiding the usual chain of command. At the time, as an apparent favor to the Saudis, CIA analysts were discouraged from questioning Saudi relationship to Arab extremists.

The unusual relationship that both George Tenet and Louis Freeh had with Saudi intelligence (and George H.W. Bush) recalls the private network that was created in the mid-1970s to accomplish covert actions though means of proxies. This private network included disgruntled CIA officers who had been fired by President Carter, as well as the group known as The Safari Club, and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

The Safari Club resulted from an agreement between Saudi Arabian intelligence chief Kamal Adham, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, the Shah of Iran, and French intelligence director Alexandre de Marenches. The BCCI network grew, with the blessing of DCI George H.W. Bush, through the guidance of the Safari Club, which needed a network of banks to help fund proxy operations, including off-the-books operations required by the CIA. This private network was utilized in the arming of the Mujahideen, the precursor to al Qaeda...

http://911blogger.com/news/2014-07-27/cia-director-george-tenet-facilitated-911