— The CIA Inspector Generals Office has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of malfeasance at the spy agency in connection with a yet-to-be released Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIAs secret detention and interrogation program, McClatchy has learned. 
 
 The criminal referral may be related to what several knowledgeable people said was CIA monitoring of computers used by Senate aides to prepare the study. The monitoring may have violated an agreement between the committee and the agency. 
 
 The development marks an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the CIA and its congressional overseers amid an extraordinary closed-door battle over the 6,300-page report on the agencys use of waterboarding and harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists held in secret overseas prisons. The report is said to be a searing indictment of the program. The CIA has disputed some of the reports findings. 
 
 White House officials have closely tracked the bitter struggle, a McClatchy investigation has found. But they havent directly intervened, perhaps because they are embroiled in their own feud with the committee, resisting surrendering top-secret documents that the CIA asserted were covered by executive privilege and sent to the White House. 
 
 McClatchys findings are based on information found in official documents and provided by people with knowledge of the dispute being fought in the seventh-floor executive offices of the CIAs headquarters in Langley, Va., and the committees high-security work spaces on Capitol Hill. 
 
 The people who spoke to McClatchy asked not to be identified because the feud involves highly classified matters and carries enormous consequences for congressional oversight over the executive branch. 
 
 The CIA and the committee declined to comment. 
 
 Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to discuss the matter and referred questions to the CIA and the Justice Department. 
 
 In question now is whether any part of the committees report, which took some four years to compose and cost $40 million, will ever see the light of day. 
 
 The report details how the CIA misled the Bush administration and Congress about the use of interrogation techniques that many experts consider torture, according to public statements by committee members. It also shows, members have said, how the techniques didnt provide the intelligence that led the CIA to the hideout in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was killed in a 2011 raid by Navy SEALs. 
 
 The committee determined earlier this year that the CIA monitored computers  in possible violation of an agreement against doing so  that the agency had provided to intelligence committee staff in a secure room at CIA headquarters that the agency insisted they use to review millions of pages of top-secret reports, cables and other documents, according to people with knowledge. 
 
 Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, a panel member, apparently was referring to the monitoring when he asked CIA Director John Brennan at a Jan. 29 hearing if provisions of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act apply to the CIA? Seems to me thats a yes or no answer. 
 
 Brennan replied that hed have to get back to Wyden after looking into what the act actually calls for and its applicability to CIAs authorities. 
 
 The law makes it a criminal act for someone to intentionally access a computer without authorization or to go beyond what theyre allowed to access. 
 
 People familiar with the issue said it wasnt clear whether the monitoring violated any law or administrative regulations. 
 
 Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who has led calls for the CIA to allow the release of the report, also appeared to be referring to the monitoring in a letter he sent Tuesday to President Barack Obama. 
 
 As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal CIA review and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the committees oversight responsibilities and for our democracy, Udall wrote. It is essential that the committee be able to do its oversight work  consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of powers  without the CIA posing impediments or obstacles as it is today. 
 
 Udall also called on Obama to strip the CIA of control over how much of the Senate report should be made public. The report remains classified nearly 15 months after the panel approved the document and turned it over to the agency for vetting. 
 
 It is my belief that the declassification of the Committee Study is of paramount importance and that decisions about what should or should not be declassified regarding this issue should not be delegated to the CIA, but directly handled by the White House, Udall wrote. 
 
 Udall has led a handful of lawmakers in pressing for the release of the reports conclusions, which committee members have publicly said show that the CIA misled the Bush administration and Congress about the intelligence gained from using water-boarding and other interrogation techniques. On Tuesday, Hayden said For some time, the White House has made clear to the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that a summary of the findings and conclusions of the final report should be declassified, with any appropriate redactions necessary to protect national security. 
 
 The conflict over the committees investigation heightened late last year when the committee discovered that a CIA internal review confirming some of the committees findings had been withheld from Senate investigators. 
 
 In his letter to Obama, Udall said the internal report not only corroborates aspects of the committees investigation, but acknowledges significant mistakes and errors made during the course of the CIA program. 
 
 It is vital that we understand how and why the content of the CIAs internal review contradicts the CIAs official June 27, 2013, response to the Committee, he added. 
 
 The agency has downplayed the importance of the document, characterizing it as a compilation of summaries of classified documents, rather than an analytical report. 
 
 CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect date for the hearing at which Sen. Wyden asked CIA director Brennan whether federal computer fraud law applied to the CIA. 
 
 Email: jlanday@mcclatchydc.com; mtaylor@mcclatchydc.com; awatkins@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @jonathanlanday, @marisaataylor, @alimariewatkins ||||| The CIA’s inspector general has accidentally deleted its only copy of a controversial Senate report about the agency’s history of brutal interrogation techniques, opening a new front in the long battle over the document. 
 
 Like many federal agencies across Washington, the spy agency watchdog was handed a copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s full, 6,700-page report about the CIA’s former methods shortly after it was completed. The full version of the report remains classified, however a 500-page executive summary was released to the public in late 2014. 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 But at some point last summer, both the electronic copy and a hard disk were destroyed, the watchdog told Congress. 
 
 Sen. Dianne Feinstein Dianne Emiel FeinsteinProgressives fume as Dems meet with Brett Kavanaugh GOP lawmaker calls on FBI to provide more info on former Feinstein staffer It’s possible to protect national security without jeopardizing the economy MORE (D-Calif.), the driving force behind the 2014 report, sent letters to the CIA and Justice Department on Friday confirming that the spy agency’s inspector general “has misplaced and/or accidentally destroyed” its copy of the report. 
 
 According to Yahoo News, which first reported the development, the deletion was described as “inadvertent.” 
 
 Acting inspector general Christopher Sharpley uploaded the report to the office's internal computer network and then destroyed the hard disk, apparently following standard protocol, the news outlet reported. Then, someone else in the watchdog’s office reportedly misinterpreted instructions from the Justice Department not to open the file and deleted it from the server. 
 
 The CIA, in which the inspector general’s office sits, retains a copy of the full report, and is waiting for the conclusion of a legal battle over the document. 
 
 Still, the episode is a humiliating one for the CIA inspector general and has inflamed human rights advocates hoping to make the report public. 
 
 Cori Crider, a director with the international rights group Reprieve, called it “stunning,” and suggested that it is part of a broader effort to erase the practices from history. 
 
 “One worries that no one is minding the store,” Crider said in a statement. 
 
 The Senate report on so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation, has been at the center of a years-long battle on the Intelligence Committee. 
 
 Committee Chairman Richard Burr Richard Mauze BurrFlorida questions Senate chairman over claim that Russians have ‘penetrated’ election systems WikiLeaks says Senate panel requested Assange testimony for Russia probe Tougher Russia sanctions face skepticism from Senate Republicans MORE (R-N.C.) opposed the publication of the report in 2014, when Republicans were still in the minority. Since taking power, he has made a concerted effort to recover copies of the report that were distributed throughout the Obama administration. The report belongs with Congress, he has said, not the executive branch. 
 
 The administration has appeared to agree with the assertions. The Justice Department has told agencies not to open the report’s file, presumably to prevent it from coming under the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, which does not apply to documents of Congress. Last week, a federal appeals court panel blocked an effort to reveal the full 6,700-page report under the open records law, claiming that it “always has been a congressional document." 
 
 On Monday, Burr spokeswoman Rebecca Watkins said that the Intelligence chairman “is pleased with” last week’s ruling. 
 
 “Consistent with the court’s opinion, Sen. Burr anticipates the return of these full reports to the Senate Intelligence Committee,” Watkins said. 
 
 But Feinstein — the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee — is pushing for the CIA inspector general to obtain a new copy of the report to replace the one that disappeared. 
 
 “Your prompt response will allay my concern that this was more than an ‘accident,’” Feinstein told CIA Director John Brennan in Friday’s letter. “The CIA IG should have a copy of the full study because the report includes extensive information directly related to the IG’s ongoing oversight of the CIA.” 
 
 Giving the watchdog office a copy of the report would also keep the “status quo” in place as the lawsuit over the document works its way through the court, she added. 
 
 According to Yahoo News, the appeals court was not notified about that the inspector general’s copy of the report was destroyed. 
 
 In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Friday, Feinstein wanted that to change. 
 
 “I believe that it is important to notify the courts of this development immediately,” she wrote. 
 
 A spokesperson with the CIA indicated that it will wait for the litigation over the document to play out before deciding how to proceed. 
 
 However, the CIA has held onto the classified copy of the full report given to it by the Senate panel, the spokesperson said, and “will continue to do so pending the final result of the litigation.” 
 
 President Obama and others consider the CIA’s former interrogation techniques to be torture. They are now prohibited under the law. 
 
 —Last updated at 12:46 p.m.
– The CIA's Inspector General is calling for the Justice Department to look into allegations that the agency illegally spied on aides to the Senate Intelligence Committee as they gathered information for a potentially contentious report on the CIA's torture program, McClatchy reports. The CIA had insisted that the Intelligence Committee staffers use computers at Agency headquarters to review millions of documents related to its interrogation program. The committee believes the CIA monitored those computers, despite a specific agreement not to, according to McClatchy sources. The 6,000-page report remains classified, but the New York Times notes that it is a "withering indictment" of CIA tactics and results. Mark Udall yesterday sent President Obama a letter saying that, "As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee," without specifying what that action was. Committee chair Dianne Feinstein would confirm only that "there is an IG investigation." The committee has been battling to release its unflattering report, which the agency wants to keep classified. Udall accused the agency in December of withholding an internal review from the committee—and that apparently led the CIA to accuse the committee of gaining unauthorized access to agency databases, leading to this current dispute.