The issue at hand is essentially the CIA covertly monitoring the Senate Intelligence Committee as the Senate investigated the CIA.     The problem stems from an obvious oversight issue where the CIA takes illegal action to monitor the Senate as they investigate.
However, there’s something more within the behavior of the people involved.  Dianne Feinstein is clearly outlining the CIA is violating the law.   As a consequence the CIA claim to be following instructions from the Obama administration and the White House.  That alone represents a big issue – However, the way CIA Director John Brennan is responding to the charges against his office are, well, somewhat troubling.

Brennan is acting, and speaking, as if he is untouchable.  It’s almost like he has a card up his sleeve; an unspoken leverage.    And when you think about how Brennan got to his CIA post, and his relationship with President Obama, alarm bells begin to ring.
Please forgive me for connecting the dots but I’m not going in this rabbit hole alone 😉
Remember, it was Brennan’s security firm who broke into the State Department passport files of Candidate Obama in 2008.   Watching him now respond to Feinstein one would take away he indeed holds a lever that allows him to feel “untouchable“.

WASHINGTON DC – The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday sharply accused the CIA of violating federal law and undermining the constitutional principle of congressional oversight as she detailed publicly for the first time how the agency secretly removed documents from computers used by her panel to investigate a controversial interrogation program.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that the situation amounted to attempted intimidation of congressional investigators, adding: “I am not taking it lightly.”
She confirmed that an internal agency investigation of the action has been referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. And she said that the CIA appears to have violated the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as various federal laws and a presidential executive order that prevents the agency from conducting domestic searches and surveillance.
She has sought an apology and recognition that the CIA search of the committee’s computers was inappropriate, she said. “I have received neither,” she added.  (LINK)

MSNBC surprisingly picks up on the angle:

https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/statuses/443374911273586689
Here is what Feinstein said, from her statement. In addition to the present situation, she specifically references a prior situation involving removal of documents under review by the Senate in 2010:

And then the CIA stated that the removal of the documents was ordered by the White House. When the committee approached the White House, the White House denied giving the CIA any such order.  (link)

https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/statuses/443407428642963456
https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/statuses/443407597090406400
(link)

John O. Brennan, Obama’s top terrorism and intelligence adviser is the owner of The Analysis Corp., the firm that was cited in March 2008 for penetrating the files of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain in the State Department’s passport office.
At the time of the breach, Brennan was working as an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign. After the breach was revealed by the Washington Times Brennan stated:

“This individual’s actions were taken without the knowledge or direction of anyone at The Analysis Corp. and are wholly inconsistent with our professional and ethical standards,” Brennan’s company said in a statement sent to reporters after the passport breach was made public. (link)

The Washington Times Reported – Passport application data includes such details as date and place of birth, e-mail address, mailing address, Social Security number, former names and travel plans. Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961 to a Kenyan father and American mother. He lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, from age six to 10.

Computer-monitoring equipment detected the activities by the three employees on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14, triggering alarms in each case, Mr. McCormack said. Mr. McCormack said the officials accessed Mr. Obama’s records “without a need to do so.”

“In each case, we immediately contacted our contractors, their employer, and two were fired and one was disciplined,” he said. (link)

But it is important to remember EXACTLY what Brennan’s background was prior to the State Department breach. Brennan spent 25 years working for the CIA prior to the security breach:

Mr. Brennan spent most of his C.I.A. career as an analyst, but during the 1990s served a tour as the chief of the station in Saudi Arabia. From 1999 to early 2001, he was chief of staff to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, as the position was then called. At the end of his C.I.A. service, in 2004 and 2005, Mr. Brennan set up what is now the counterterrorism center. (link)

Yet people would have you believe after 25 years within the CIA, and after being the Chief of Staff to the Director, and after being the person who set up the counter terrorism center, and after being the CIA approved contractor for the State dept., well, he just didn’t know that someone from his firm was penetrating the passport files within the State Dept. on three occasions in Jan and Feb to look at information of the candidate who he was specifically working for….. you getting this?
Well, that was their story, and they stuck to it in 2008.
After the initial inquiry, federal investigators maintained the target of the illegal activity was Obama’s passport file. It does not take a stretch to come to the conclusion this was for the sole purpose of cleansing the records of information that would jeopardize Obama’s candidacy. As many people speculated at the time, the breach of the passport records of the other candidates was merely to create confusion.
Brennan was, at the time, an unpaid advisor working with Obama’s campaign. Passport files include an applicant’s name, gender, social security number, date and place of birth, and passport number. Additional information may include birth certificates, naturalization certificates, or oaths of allegiance for U.S. born persons who adopted the citizenship of a foreign country as minors.
It is important to remember the oversight agency who would be investigating the breach – The Senate Foreign Relations Committee oversees the State Department.
At the time Senator Joe Biden, now Vice President Biden, was the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time the breach would be investigated.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Obama and personally apologized for the breach. “I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file,” Rice told reporters. She phoned Clinton and McCain and offered similar apologies.

Following the breach, State Department managers met with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, whose committee has oversight over the Foreign Service and the passport office. (link)

…..And, well, what do you know?…. Biden became the VP pick of Obama.
Also, in mid February 2010, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs alerted WH reporters who regularly cover daily events that certain questions about Obama’s job with Business International Corporation (BIC) would not be subject to discussion.
BIC was well-known in Washington DC to be a front company for the CIA, hence many speculated the State Department passport records were scrubbed to erase any mention of Obama’s CIA activities and his personal information; it would not be too long a dotted line to the false story claim of Columbia University attendance.
But it became over-the-top suspicious when the State Department employee, Lt. Quarles Harris, Jr. who had the access, and apparently was the one who penetrated the database and scrubbed the records, was killed – April 18th 2008.
Lt. Harris decided to cooperate with the FBI who was investigating the break-in. Soon after his cooperation became a matter of record his body was discovered in his parked car; He had been shot in the head, described as execution style.