Sen. John McCain said the government must tighten up access to classified programs. | Getty McCain on WikiLeaks dump: 'I can't tell you how serious this is'

Sen. John McCain is raising the alarm about WikiLeaks' release of CIA surveillance techniques and predicting "a real fundamental evaluation of everything we do" in U.S. intelligence.

After the anti-secrecy group dumped documents online detailing tactics that intelligence agencies allegedly use to hack computers and phones, the Senate Armed Services chairman said the situation is "really serious" and requires a wholesale evaluation of who is allowed to have access to such classified materials.


"You are now looking at ways our intelligence agencies do business being revealed. It has all kind of ramifications. It's going to cause a real fundamental evaluation of everything we do, including FISA," McCain said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "The first priority is: Who’s getting this information? Who’s able to reveal this kind of information?"

FISA authorizes several key surveillance programs that expire at the end of the year, forcing Congress to reauthorize them or lose powerful intelligence tools. Surveillance critics are using the deadline as a moment to push for revision of the law.

McCain said either the CIA has been hacked or a contractor is leaking documents again, reminiscent of when Edward Snowden distributed documents to news organizations revealing the extent of the sweeping National Security Agency data-mining programs. The Arizona senator said that either way, the government must tighten up access to classified programs.

"After 9/11, what was the problem? We stove-piped, we never shared information. So the answer was: Share information with everybody. So now, we see the ramifications of that. There’s obviously been an overcompensation of the lessons we learned from 9/11," McCain said, referring to intelligence sharing efforts after the terrorist attacks in 2001. “I can’t tell you how serious this is.”

He said he did learn something from the document dump, however.

"I didn’t know, honestly, that I could be watched from my television, even though it’s off," McCain said. "That’s a little scary when you think about it: Particularly given my behavior patterns. Throwing things at the set, yelling and screaming: 'It’s a lie!'"