Dianne Feinstein’s Fight Against The CIA Made A Difference

LOADING ERROR LOADING In 2009, Dianne Feinstein became the first woman to lead the storied Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — just as Barack Obama became the second president to oversee the massively expanded national security establishment that America developed after the 9/11 terror attacks. American interrogators, or foreign partners they directed, meted out gruesome tactics the agency called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Weeks after Feinstein took over the Intelligence Committee, two members of the committee’s staff told the panel they had reviewed CIA cables showing the agency had subjected detainees to extensive waterboarding and stress positions, as well as threats, near-constant nudity and slaps. Appearing on Fox News a few weeks later, former CIA director Michael Hayden cited Feinstein’s speech to launch a sexist assault on her work, saying the remarks showed an “emotional feeling on the part of the senator” that compromised her report. She pushed back against the CIA’s recommended cuts and spent months negotiating with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough over questions like whether the document could include pseudonyms for key figures in the rendition program, which the CIA first said Senate staffers could employ but then claimed would make operatives identifiable. Yet she said the existence of comprehensive government documentation of CIA misdeeds gives heft to calls for further reform, praising Feinstein for “a tremendous legacy.” Amid the political success of Trump, who purports that torture is effective, Feinstein’s data-driven rebuke of that lie offers a corrective.