The House Intelligence Committee has launched a series of hearings as part of its investigation into whether U.S. intelligence agencies broke the law by failing to inform Congress of covert activities. ...Reyes announced in July that the committee would investigate possible violations of the law governing how and when intelligence agencies notify Congress of their activities. The announcement came after a handful of headline-grabbing disclosures exposed problems with the congressional notification process.
In June, for example, CIA Director Leon Panetta informed Congress that lawmakers had been kept in the dark for years about a secret program authorized by the Bush administration to assassinate terrorists abroad. And in May, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the CIA had misled lawmakers over the use in 2002 of waterboarding in interrogations, which is defined as torture by international law. ...
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