Obama knew CIA secretly monitored intelligence committee, Sen. Udall claims [View all]

[Octafish]

White House declines to comment after Mark Udall says agency spied on staffers preparing scathing report into CIA torture after 9/11

Spencer Ackerman in Washington
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 March 2014 12.06 EST

A leading US senator has said that President Obama knew of an “unprecedented action” taken by the CIA against the Senate intelligence committee, which has apparently prompted an inspector general’s inquiry at Langley.

The subtle reference in a Tuesday letter from Senator Mark Udall to Obama, seeking to enlist the president’s help in declassifying a 6,300-page inquiry by the committee into torture carried out by CIA interrogators after 9/11, threatens to plunge the White House into a battle between the agency and its Senate overseers.

SNIP...

Udall, a Colorado Democrat and one of the CIA’s leading pursuers on the committee, appeared to reference that surreptitious spying on Congress, which Udall said undermined democratic principles.

“As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal CIA review and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee’s oversight powers and for our democracy,” Udall wrote to Obama on Tuesday.

Independent observers were unaware of a precedent for the CIA spying on the congressional committees established in the 1970s to check abuses by the intelligence agencies.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/obama-cia-senate-intelligence-committee-torture

"Separation of Powers" is just the tip of the lettuce.

Yeah. That time "observers were unaware" must be when the NSA spied on Frank Church and Howard Baker.