URGENT: USA TODAY RESPONSE

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06302697
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: October 23, 2023
• Document Release Date: August 3, 2023
• Case Number: F-2014-01059
• Publication Date: March 12, 2014

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Wednesday, March 12, 2014 7:21 PM
RE: URGENT: USA Today Response
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED/
CIA: WE BELIEVE IN STRONG, BI-PARTISAN OVERSIGHT
By Dean Boyd, Director of CIA Office of Public Affairs
The CIA believes in the necessity of effective, strong, and bipartisan Congressional oversight. We are a
far better organization because of Congressional oversight, and we will do whatever we can to be
responsive to the elected representatives of the American people.
The CIA conducted a thorough review of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on
the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program and presented an extensive written response to
the Committee in June 2013. The CIA's response agreed with a number of the findings of the SSCI
report, but disagreed with others. Since that time, we have worked extensively with the Committee to
resolve differences and determine the best way forward on potential declassification and we will continue
to do so.
In recent months, the CIA had reason to believe, based on comments and correspondence from SSCI
Members and staff to CIA officials, that SSCI staff may have improperly accessed and retained sensitive
CIA documents that were stored on a CIA local area network. These documents were privileged,
deliberative, pre-decisional, Executive Branch material that implicated separation of powers concerns.
Because we were concerned that there may have been a breach or vulnerability in the CIA local area
network on which CIA stored these documents, CIA information technology specialists were asked to
conduct a limited review to determine whether these files were located on the side of the CIA network
SSCI was authorized to use. That review appeared to confirm SSCI's unauthorized access to the
documents.
The CIA quickly notified the Committee leadership and requested that copies of these materials be
returned. CIA offered to conduct a joint security review with the Committee to determine how
Committee staff had obtained the materials. To ensure that the actions of CIA officers were reviewed
independently, we asked the CIA Inspector General to look into the actions of CIA officers.
We have acknowledged and learned from the RDI program's shortcomings and we have taken corrective
measures to prevent such mistakes from happening again. But we also owe it to the women and men who
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faithfully did their duty in executing this program to try and make sure any historical account of it is
balanced and accurate. Even as we have learned from the past, we must be able to put the past behind us
so that we can devote our full attention to the future.
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