Obama knew CIA secretly monitored intelligence committee, Sen. Udall claims

[struggle4progress]

35. It's sad to see the Guardian stoop to this level of misrepresentation

IMO, of course, the Senate report on CIA torture must be released to the public

At issue here is some pissing match between the Senate and the CIA: (1) the Senate claiming that the CIA inappropriately withheld information to thwart oversight, as evidenced by an internal document (related to the matters under Senate investigation) that the CIA apparently failed to provide to Senate investigators but that Senate investigators somehow obtained anyway; (2) the CIA claiming that the Senate investigators inappropriately obtained the document; and (3) additional counter-claiming by various persons that the CIA investigation, into exactly how Senate investigators obtained the document, led the CIA to search computers provided by the CIA for use by Senate investigators

Various of the claims have apparently been referred to the DoJ and FBI to determine whether Senate investigators or CIA personnel engaged in activity contrary to law

But according to some media reports, the CIA network available to the Senate investigators was an isolated network deliberately established by the CIA for the purpose of the Senate investigation: if that is accurate, it is very difficult to understand how Senate investigators could have inappropriately used the network to obtain the document -- or how the document could possibly have been available to Senate investigators through the network, unless the CIA itself had made the document available on the network. We should therefore expect the DoJ and FBI inquiries into the matter to conclude, after some days of breathless hype, without any finding of wrongdoing by Senate investigators

Who exactly claims -- that the CIA improperly searched CIA computers made available by the CIA for use by Senate investigators for the purpose of the Senate investigation -- is at present unclear. In the article linked by the OP, Levin merely says "as alleged by the media." The actual Wyden letter is extremely vague, and one cannot easily discern exactly what the letter means: it nowhere references any spying, and it certainly does not say anything like "Obama knew CIA secretly monitored intelligence committee"

This leads us straight into the question: What exactly is the point of this perhaps pointless pissing match? A natural guess might be: some folk are engineering this as a distraction from the important question -- which is, How can we get the Senate report dislodged and into the public eye?