Hey folks, I'm sorry: CIA director apologizes for infiltrating Senate computers

I’m sorry!

That’s the word from CIA director John Brennan, who was forced to apologize to his friends on the Senate Intelligence Committee after an internal investigation found CIA technicians searching Senate computers without warrants.

An agency spokesman, Dean Boyd, told reporters that Brennan had created an “accountability board” to investigate the affair with an eye to disciplining underlings involved in the nefarious snooping. CIA technicians vacuuming Senate computers with or without warrants is serious.

For their part, the crew over at the Justice Department, led by attorney general Eric Holder, has thus far refused to pursue criminal investigations into the CIA officers who were involved. There is warranted speculation the order to snoop came from the top, because no agency officials would be stupid enough engage in such skullduggery without a green light from superiors.

The unauthorized snooping and ensuing scandal derived from the agency’s interest in learning more about some members of the Senate intelligence committee looking into the CIA’s controversial global interrogation campaign for terror suspects.

It was later disclosed the CIA was abusing some suspects captured on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan or flying them to remote sites in snatch-and-grab operations in cities in Europe and across the Middle East.

Intelligence sources told VentureBeat exclusively that taking terror suspects off the street and doing what was necessary helped prevent more terror attacks on the U.S..

The de facto admission by Brennan is rare. The investigation will be led by former Democratic senator from Indiana Evan Bayh. Knowledge of the computer infiltration first arose in March and was reportedly prompted after the CIA believed that a member of the Senate intelligence committee had illicitly procured a report by the spy agency on the rendition program, according to press reports.

California senator Diane Feinstein, who sits on the committee, was reportedly deeply indignant after learning of the snooping and is said to have personally confronted Brennan over the allegations.