Senate panel reportedly compiling intel review

The Senate Intelligence Committee should complete a comprehensive review of all U.S. intelligence operations by late next year, according to a report Friday.

The Daily Beast reported the committee told staffers in April to put together a comprehensive list of all the intelligence community’s collection programs, which should be done by next September.

{mosads}There has been no decision on whether an unclassified version would be made public, according to the report. 

Nearly a year ago, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called for the “total review” of all intelligence programs after finding the committee was not properly informed of the collection of some foreign leaders’ communication. She expressed her “total opposition” to the collection at the time. 

“Unlike NSA’s collection of phone records under a court order, it is clear to me that certain surveillance activities have been in effect for more than a decade and that the Senate Intelligence Committee was not satisfactorily informed,” she said in October 2013. “Therefore, our oversight needs to be strengthened and increased.”

Few details have been reported since then. The review is focusing on signal intelligence as well as human and open source intelligence, and “everything is subject to review,” according to the report. 

The review will look for potentially undisclosed programs the committee has not been made aware of and whether the activities are lawfully carried out. The staff will also look at whether there is any duplication in programs.

“If there are intelligence collection programs we don’t know about, that’s something we’d want to know about,” a committee staffer told the publication.