Afternoon Must-Read: Spencer Ackerman: CIA Steals the Limelight from the NSA – and Finds Itself in Full-Blown Crisis

Spencer Ackerman: CIA steals the limelight from the NSA – and finds itself in full-blown crisis: “After a year in which the National Security Agency faced global condemnation, the Central Intelligence Agency has now taken over as the US intelligence body most firmly in the midst of a full-blown crisis. The CIA has dug itself into a morass the NSA has firmly avoided: antagonizing its congressional overseers. It is a crisis redolent with ironies. A White House that labored intently to move past the CIA’s post-9/11 torture legacy, disappointing many supporters, must now resolve a row stemming directly from it. A CIA director who first missed out on his job over fears he was soft on agency torture is now in the crosshairs of what his Senate overseers considers a cover-up. A Senate committee chairwoman who has fiercely defended the NSA’s abilities to collect data on every American phone call is furious that the CIA monitored the network usage of her staff, calling the alleged infraction a potential subversion of the Senate’s constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities. A Justice Department that limited and ultimately dropped a criminal inquiry into CIA torture without bringing charges now has to consider potential criminal liability against Senate staff conducting their own inquiry; and for CIA officials who allegedly attempted to thwart it.”