CIA Vets Blast Senate Probe of Operations Under Bush

By second-guessing the staffers now, warn the Agency veterans, Feinstein's investigation will have a "chilling effect on people who are asked to do risky things for this administration," says a former senior CIA official.

Staffers at the CIA will wonder why they are being singled out for investigation for executing the Bush Administration's policies, "while whose who made those policies are busy writing their memoirs," says Paul Pillar, who was the agency's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000-05, and now teaches at Georgetown University.

To some ex-officials, the whole thing smacks of politics and hypocrisy. They say Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle were thoroughly briefed about CIA operations, including details about interrogation techniques. "The leadership was fully briefed, and there was no objection at the time," says Henry "Hank" Crumpton, who headed the CIA's operations in Afghanistan after 9/11.

But even Agency veterans winced at the latest bombshell from Gitmo: the revelation that the CIA destroyed 92 videotapes that may have shown detainees being subjected to harsh interrogation techniques. "It would have been my instinct to say that these [videotapes] are the sort of thing we have to keep," says Ford.

For the CIA staffers who may come under scrutiny in the Leahy and Feinstein investigations, there's some consolation in the fact that their new boss is in their corner. Former Congressman and Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta has promised to cooperate with Congress, saying, "I think that we have a responsibility to be transparent on these issues and to provide them that information." But during his confirmation hearings by Feinstein's Committee, Panetta made it clear he doesn't support the prosecution of CIA staff involved in detention and interrogation of terror suspects, saying they were simply following guidelines issued by the Bush administration. At a media roundtable last week, Panetta returned to the theme: "I would not support any investigation or a prosecution of those individuals. I think they did their job, they did it pursuant to the guidance that was provided them, whether you agreed or disagreed with it."

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