In January 2014, CIA officials claimed that the Intelligence Committee had accessed review documents and removed them from CIA facilities in 2010 without CIA authorization. On March 11, 2014, Sen.
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, confirmed that copies of portions of the review had been removed and transferred to a safe in the Senate's
Hart Office Building. She argued that the action was necessary to protect the documents from the CIA,
which had destroyed videotapes depicting brutal interrogation methods in 2005. 45-minute speech on March 11, 2014, Feinstein said the CIA unlawfully searched the Intelligence Committee's computers to determine how the committee staff obtained the review documents. Feinstein also said that the CIA's acting general counsel, later identified as
Robert Eatinger, requested the FBI conduct a criminal inquiry into the committee staff's behavior. She said she believed that the request was "a potential effort to intimidate [Intelligence Committee] staff." Eatinger had been one of two lawyers who approved the destruction of video tapes in 2005, and Feinstein added that Eatinger was mentioned by name over 1,600 times in the Committee's report. She promised to push for declassifying the committee report, which she said would reveal "the horrible details of the CIA program." In July 2014, a Justice Department spokesman confirmed that they would not be pursuing charges in the hacking incident. On July 31, 2014, the CIA confirmed that it had improperly gained access to the Senate Intelligence Committee's computer network via a report from its own Inspector General. CIA director
John O. Brennan had previously denied this, adding, "When the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong." The DOJ had agreed with this finding afterwards. ==See also==