— Congressional aides involved in preparing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s unreleased study of the CIA’s secret interrogation and detention program walked out of the spy agency’s fortress-like headquarters with classified documents that the CIA contended they weren’t authorized to have, McClatchy has learned. 
 
 After the CIA confronted the panel in January about the removal of the material last fall, panel staff concluded that the agency had monitored computers they’d been given to use in a high-security research room at the CIA campus in Langley, Va., a McClatchy investigation found. 
 
 It remained unclear Wednesday if the monitoring, the unauthorized removal of classified material or another matter were the subject of a recent CIA request to the Justice Department for an investigation into alleged malfeasance in connection with the committee’s top-secret study. 
 
 The documents removed from the agency included a draft of an internal CIA review that at least one lawmaker has publicly said showed that agency leaders misled the Intelligence Committee in disputing some of the committee report’s findings, according to a knowledgeable person who requested anonymity because of the matter’s extraordinary sensitivity. 
 
 In a combative statement issued Wednesday evening, CIA Director John Brennan chastised unidentified senators for making “spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts.” 
 
 “I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the executive branch or legislative branch,” he said in an apparent reference to the request for a Justice Department investigation. “Until then, I would encourage others to refrain from outbursts that do a disservice to the important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and congressional overseers.” 
 
 The removal of the documents is the focus of an intense legal dispute between the CIA and its congressional overseers, said several people who also cited the matter’s sensitivity in asking to remain anonymous. 
 
 Some committee members regard the monitoring as a possible violation of the law and contend that their oversight powers give them the right to the documents that were removed. On the other hand, the CIA considers the removal as a massive security breach because the agency doesn’t believe that the committee had a right to those particular materials. 
 
 “Even if the agency is technically correct on the legalities, it’s a real asinine thing to pick a fight with your oversight committee like this,” said a U.S. official who was among those who spoke to McClatchy. “You’ve got to be asking yourself why the agency would be willing to take such a risk. The documents must be so damned loaded.” 
 
 White House officials have held at least one closed-door meeting with committee members about the monitoring and the removal of the documents, said the first knowledgeable person. 
 
 White House officials were trying to determine how the materials that were taken from CIA headquarters found their way into a database into which millions of pages of top-secret reports, emails and other documents were made available to panel staff after being vetted by CIA officials and contractors, said the knowledgeable person. 
 
 The extraordinary battle has created an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the spy agency and its congressional overseers and raises significant implications for the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of the government. It also has fueled uncertainty over how much of the committee’s report will ever be made public. 
 
 “The CIA has gone to just about any lengths you can imagine to make sure that the detention and interrogation report won’t be released,” said Sen. Mark Heinrich, D-N.M., a Senate Intelligence Committee member who has pushed hard for the release of the report. 
 
 “As furious as I am about these allegations, I want to keep focused on getting that report out to the people so that they can read the truth and make up their own minds as to who made those decisions and why,” he said. 
 
 The committee has the legal power to decide through a simple majority vote to release whatever portions of the study it deems should be made public. If the executive branch continues to resist the release of the information, the committee’s action must then be approved by the full Senate. 
 
 In voting in December 2012 to approve the final draft, the panel gave the CIA three months in which to respond to the findings and recommend what parts should be kept secret. It has now been 15 months since the committee approved the report. 
 
 Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., declined to comment while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill except to confirm that CIA Inspector General David Buckley was looking into whether the agency had monitored her staff’s computers. 
 
 White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment, referring questions to the Justice Department and to the CIA. 
 
 “As a general matter, we are in touch with the committee,” Carney said, adding that the White House has told Feinstein that “the summary and conclusions” of the panel’s report “should be declassified with any redactions necessary to protect national security.” 
 
 While eating lunch during a visit to New Britain, Conn., with four New England governors, Obama was asked by a reporter if he had any reaction to the allegation that the CIA monitored Intelligence Committee computers. 
 
 “I’m going to try to make sure I don’t spill anything on my tie,” he responded. 
 
 The 6,300-page report lays out in exhaustive detail what lawmakers have publicly described as a scathing indictment of the CIA’s use during the Bush administration of waterboarding and other harsh techniques to interrogate suspected terrorists detained in secret “black site” prisons overseas. 
 
 The study, which took four years to complete at a cost of $40 million, also found that the CIA misled the White House, Congress and the public over the value of the intelligence produced by the program, according to the lawmakers. 
 
 Many experts and foreign governments have condemned the techniques as torture. The Bush administration, which insisted that the techniques were legal, shut down the program in 2006 and Obama banned the use of waterboarding – which he described as torture – after assuming office in 2009. 
 
 The CIA disputed significant portions of the committee’s findings in its official response to the report, which it submitted in June, three months after the deadline set by the committee. The agency also disputes that it conducted an internal review of the detention and interrogation program, asserting that it only compiled summaries of documents provided to the committee and not an analytical report. 
 
 Several months after the CIA submitted its official response to the committee report, aides discovered in the database of top-secret documents at CIA headquarters a draft of an internal review ordered by former CIA Director Leon Panetta of the materials released to the panel, said the knowledgeable person. 
 
 They determined that it showed that the CIA leadership disputed report findings that they knew were corroborated by the so-called Panetta review, said the knowledgeable person. 
 
 The aides printed the material, walked out of CIA headquarters with it and took it to Capitol Hill, said the knowledgeable person. 
 
 “All this goes back to what is the technical structure here,” said the U.S. official who confirmed the unauthorized removal. “If I was a Senate staffer and I was given access to documents on the system, I would have a laptop that’s cleared. I would be allowed to look at these documents. But with these sorts of things, there’s generally an agreement that you can’t download or take them.” 
 
 The CIA discovered the security breach and brought it to the committee’s attention in January, leading to a determination that the agency recorded the staffers’ use of the computers in the high-security research room, and then confirmed the breach by reviewing the usage data, said the knowledgeable person. 
 
 Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., a member of the Intelligence Committee who has led calls for the release of the report, disclosed at a hearing in December the existence of the Panetta review without saying how the committee had learned of it. He contended that the review broadly corroborated the committee’s findings and questioned why it was dramatically different from the CIA’s official response. 
 
 Udall repeated his contentions in a letter that he sent Tuesday to Obama in which he called on the president to remove from the CIA and give to the White House control over how much of the committee report should be made public. 
 
 “This internal CIA review corroborates some of the important findings of the committee study and acknowledges significant mistakes and errors made during the course of the CIA program – mistakes and errors that the CIA’s official June 27, 2013, response to the committee study denies or minimizes,” Udall wrote. 
 
 Udall also appeared to refer in the letter to the computer monitoring, writing that Obama knew that the “CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal CIA review.” 
 
 Udall and Heinrich have called on the CIA to submit the completed Panetta review to the committee, and Udall says he will maintain a procedural hold on the nomination of Caroline Krass to be the new CIA general counsel until the document is provided. 
 
 Sean Cockerham, David Lightman and James Rosen of the Washington Bureau contributed. 
 
 Email: jlanday@mcclatchydc.com, awatkins@mcclatchydc.com, mtaylor@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @jonathanlanday, @alimariewatkins, @marisaataylor ||||| — The CIA Inspector Generals Office has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of malfeasance at the spy agency in connection with a yet-to-be released Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIAs secret detention and interrogation program, McClatchy has learned. 
 
 The criminal referral may be related to what several knowledgeable people said was CIA monitoring of computers used by Senate aides to prepare the study. The monitoring may have violated an agreement between the committee and the agency. 
 
 The development marks an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the CIA and its congressional overseers amid an extraordinary closed-door battle over the 6,300-page report on the agencys use of waterboarding and harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists held in secret overseas prisons. The report is said to be a searing indictment of the program. The CIA has disputed some of the reports findings. 
 
 White House officials have closely tracked the bitter struggle, a McClatchy investigation has found. But they havent directly intervened, perhaps because they are embroiled in their own feud with the committee, resisting surrendering top-secret documents that the CIA asserted were covered by executive privilege and sent to the White House. 
 
 McClatchys findings are based on information found in official documents and provided by people with knowledge of the dispute being fought in the seventh-floor executive offices of the CIAs headquarters in Langley, Va., and the committees high-security work spaces on Capitol Hill. 
 
 The people who spoke to McClatchy asked not to be identified because the feud involves highly classified matters and carries enormous consequences for congressional oversight over the executive branch. 
 
 The CIA and the committee declined to comment. 
 
 Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to discuss the matter and referred questions to the CIA and the Justice Department. 
 
 In question now is whether any part of the committees report, which took some four years to compose and cost $40 million, will ever see the light of day. 
 
 The report details how the CIA misled the Bush administration and Congress about the use of interrogation techniques that many experts consider torture, according to public statements by committee members. It also shows, members have said, how the techniques didnt provide the intelligence that led the CIA to the hideout in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was killed in a 2011 raid by Navy SEALs. 
 
 The committee determined earlier this year that the CIA monitored computers  in possible violation of an agreement against doing so  that the agency had provided to intelligence committee staff in a secure room at CIA headquarters that the agency insisted they use to review millions of pages of top-secret reports, cables and other documents, according to people with knowledge. 
 
 Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, a panel member, apparently was referring to the monitoring when he asked CIA Director John Brennan at a Jan. 29 hearing if provisions of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act apply to the CIA? Seems to me thats a yes or no answer. 
 
 Brennan replied that hed have to get back to Wyden after looking into what the act actually calls for and its applicability to CIAs authorities. 
 
 The law makes it a criminal act for someone to intentionally access a computer without authorization or to go beyond what theyre allowed to access. 
 
 People familiar with the issue said it wasnt clear whether the monitoring violated any law or administrative regulations. 
 
 Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who has led calls for the CIA to allow the release of the report, also appeared to be referring to the monitoring in a letter he sent Tuesday to President Barack Obama. 
 
 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 committees oversight responsibilities and for our democracy, Udall wrote. It is essential that the committee be able to do its oversight work  consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of powers  without the CIA posing impediments or obstacles as it is today. 
 
 Udall also called on Obama to strip the CIA of control over how much of the Senate report should be made public. The report remains classified nearly 15 months after the panel approved the document and turned it over to the agency for vetting. 
 
 It is my belief that the declassification of the Committee Study is of paramount importance and that decisions about what should or should not be declassified regarding this issue should not be delegated to the CIA, but directly handled by the White House, Udall wrote. 
 
 Udall has led a handful of lawmakers in pressing for the release of the reports conclusions, which committee members have publicly said show that the CIA misled the Bush administration and Congress about the intelligence gained from using water-boarding and other interrogation techniques. On Tuesday, Hayden said For some time, the White House has made clear to the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that a summary of the findings and conclusions of the final report should be declassified, with any appropriate redactions necessary to protect national security. 
 
 The conflict over the committees investigation heightened late last year when the committee discovered that a CIA internal review confirming some of the committees findings had been withheld from Senate investigators. 
 
 In his letter to Obama, Udall said the internal report not only corroborates aspects of the committees investigation, but acknowledges significant mistakes and errors made during the course of the CIA program. 
 
 It is vital that we understand how and why the content of the CIAs internal review contradicts the CIAs official June 27, 2013, response to the Committee, he added. 
 
 The agency has downplayed the importance of the document, characterizing it as a compilation of summaries of classified documents, rather than an analytical report. 
 
 CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect date for the hearing at which Sen. Wyden asked CIA director Brennan whether federal computer fraud law applied to the CIA. 
 
 Email: jlanday@mcclatchydc.com; mtaylor@mcclatchydc.com; awatkins@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @jonathanlanday, @marisaataylor, @alimariewatkins ||||| Relations between the CIA and the US senators charged with its political oversight were at a nadir on Wednesday after the head of the agency issued a rare public rebuke to lawmakers who accused it of spying on their staff.John Brennan, the director of the CIA, said the claims by members of the Senate intelligence committee were “spurious” and “wholly unsupported by the facts”, and went as far as suggesting the committee itself may have been guilty of wrongdoing. The battle stems from a hotly contested report into the use of torture by the CIA in the interrogations it carried out after 9/11, whose conclusions are so explosive that it has yet to be declassified, despite exhortations from the White House that a summary should be published. Earlier on Wednesday reports surfaced that the CIA inspector general had opened an inquiry, said to have been referred to the justice department, into claims that CIA employees had acted improperly. Suggestions that the CIA had monitored the computer networks of committee staffers had shocked the senators that sit on the panel. Some observers believe that such actions might be criminal. Senator Mark Udall, a member of the committee who has been vocal in his critism of the CIA, had earlier written to Barack Obama alleging that the president knew about the “unprecedented action” carried out by the agency. In his statement on Wednesday Brennan hit back in unusually strong terms. “I am deeply dismayed that some members of the Senate have decided to make spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts,” Brennan said. 
 
 “I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the executive branch or legislative branch,” Brennan continued, raising a suggestion that the Senate committee itself might have acted improperly. 
 
 He did not immediately specify the “appropriate authorities” in question. 
 
 “Until then I would encourage others to refrain from outbursts that do a disservice to the important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and congressional overseers.” 
 
 Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, declined to comment on Brennan’s remarks, but confirmed the excistence of an inquiry by the CIA inspector general. 
 
 
 
 The allegation that the CIA may have surreptitiously monitored the committee responsible for holding it to account represented a modern low in relations between the two. It blew into public view the acrimony that has developed in private over the Senate panel’s still-classified inquiry into the agency’s use of torture techniques on post-9/11 terrorism detainees. The panel has intimated that the CIA misled both the committee and policymakers about the efficacy of the techniques and related issues. 
 
 In his letter, sent on Tuesday, Udall sought to enlist the White House’s aid on the subject, intimating that Obama had been made aware of the issue. “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. 
 
 Neither Udall, the White House nor the justice department would comment on the subject during a day notable for bitterness between a committee that has accorded the CIA much deference in recent years and an agency that has been determined to restore its reputation on Capitol Hill after intelligence failures on the Iraq war plunged its standing to historic lows. 
 
 Observers expressed alarm about the reports of the CIA inspector general inquiry, first revealed by McClatchy and the New York Times, raising the disturbing prospect of a bitter public fight between an angry intelligence agency and its elected overseers. 
 
 “In the worst case it would be a subversion of independent oversight and a violation of separation of powers,” Steven Aftergood, an intelligence analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Guardian. “It’s potentially very serious.” 
 
 Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International said: “If the reports are true the CIA appears to have doubled down on its own wrongdoing, a shocking but sadly unsurprising move given the agency’s role in torture. The key question is whether President Obama has the backbone to finally set things right.” 
 
 The White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told the Guardian on Wednesday that Obama supported declassifying the major findings of the Senate report – although Aftergood pointed out that Obama could do so at will. 
 
 Hayden said: “For some time the White House has made clear to the chairman of the Senate select committee on intelligence that a summary of the findings and conclusions of the final report should be declassified, with any appropriate redactions necessary to protect national security.”
– The CIA's Inspector General is calling for the Justice Department to look into allegations that the agency illegally spied on aides to the Senate Intelligence Committee as they gathered information for a potentially contentious report on the CIA's torture program, McClatchy reports. The CIA had insisted that the Intelligence Committee staffers use computers at Agency headquarters to review millions of documents related to its interrogation program. The committee believes the CIA monitored those computers, despite a specific agreement not to, according to McClatchy sources. The 6,000-page report remains classified, but the New York Times notes that it is a "withering indictment" of CIA tactics and results. Mark Udall yesterday sent President Obama a letter saying that, "As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee," without specifying what that action was. Committee chair Dianne Feinstein would confirm only that "there is an IG investigation." The committee has been battling to release its unflattering report, which the agency wants to keep classified. Udall accused the agency in December of withholding an internal review from the committee—and that apparently led the CIA to accuse the committee of gaining unauthorized access to agency databases, leading to this current dispute.