Brennan responded to the report in a press conference at C.I.A. headquarters, in Langley—the first such conference to be televised live. Like Hayden and Rizzo, he criticized the report as “partisan” and “flawed.” He denied that the C.I.A. had misled the White House and Congress, arguing that detainees subjected to the enhanced techniques had provided valuable information, and that it was “unknowable” whether they would have done so under other circumstances. Most important, he refused to characterize the procedures as torture, or to say that they should not be used again. “I defer to the policymakers in future times,” he said. President Obama gave no speech of his own about the report, letting Brennan speak for the Administration.

On July 31st, the C.I.A. inspector general, David Buckley, released a summary of findings in the internal investigation he had started in January. He concluded that agency employees had acted improperly in accessing the computers and the e-mail of the committee staff, and that the crimes report that the C.I.A. had filed with the Justice Department was based on erroneous information.

Brennan, four months after his firm denials at the Council on Foreign Relations, apologized to Feinstein and Chambliss. He also said that he was appointing an accountability board, headed by the retired Democratic senator Evan Bayh, to review the situation. Feinstein pointed out that the report “confirmed what I said on the Senate floor in March,” but she also spoke of “positive first steps.”

Some of her colleagues weren’t ready to abandon the fight. Senator Carl Levin demanded that Brennan explain his earlier denial, and Udall and Heinrich called for his resignation. Even Chambliss found the situation “very, very serious.” During a White House news conference the next day, Obama made his most forthright acknowledgment yet of the substance of the report: “When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line.” But he emphasized his “full confidence” in Brennan: “Keep in mind—John Brennan called for that I.G. report.”

When Obama came into office, he wanted to heal the breach between Congress and the C.I.A. that had developed during the Bush Administration. Yet the agency’s relationship with Congress had grown only more fraught. Senator Harry Reid had stopped taking his intelligence briefings from Brennan. As Majority Leader, Reid regularly got calls from the White House asking him to assume onerous legislative tasks; now he made a preëmptive move. “He called Denis McDonough and said, ‘I told Brennan back in January what he should do!’ ” the senior Senate staffer recalled. “ ‘Don’t call me on this—I’m not defending him. I’m not going to undermine Dianne Feinstein. You have done nothing but obstruct this report.’ ” When Reid had a similar conversation with the President, the staffer said, “the President tried to justify what the C.I.A. had done, saying the staff had gotten the Panetta review, and the C.I.A. had no choice.”

Brennan’s predicament was resolved six months later. In mid-January, 2015, the accountability board dismissed Buckley’s conclusion that the officers who searched the Senate computers had acted improperly. On the contrary, the board said, there was no “common understanding” between the committee and the agency about access to the Senate staff’s computers—only an “informal” one. And the board concluded that concerns about the Panetta review justified the search. It confirmed that Brennan had conveyed “explicit instructions” on three occasions to find out whether Senate staff members had accessed the Panetta review. But, it continued, “a misunderstanding between the D/CIA and [redacted] arose because the former did not appreciate what forensic techniques were necessary to answer his questions and the latter did not understand the D/CIA’s expectations that no intrusive methods be employed.”

John Rizzo told me that this accountability board was different from any he had seen during three decades at the agency. Boards were often formed to follow up on an inspector general’s report and recommend disciplinary action for those who had acted improperly. Here the board discredited the inspector general. “I was surprised they came out as hard as they did on Buckley,” Rizzo said. (In January, Buckley left the agency.) “It was a surprise to me, too, that they didn’t mete out discipline. I thought it was a given, especially considering that Brennan went and apologized to Feinstein.” Why did he think no one was disciplined? Rizzo laughed. “From reading the board’s report, it appears that John Brennan himself was the one. He said, basically, pull out all the stops. So how do you hold subordinates liable for something like that?”

On the day the board issued its findings, shortly after the Republicans took control of the Senate, the new chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr, wrote to Obama, asking that all copies of the complete torture report that Feinstein had sent to the White House and other parts of the executive branch, including the Departments of State, Justice, and Defense, be returned. (Burr was apparently concerned that the report would become publicly available under the Freedom of Information Act.) Feinstein, now the vice-chair, wrote to Obama, strongly opposing the request. Several weeks later, the Administration pledged that it would not destroy or return copies without permission from the courts. Regarding Burr’s letter, the former C.I.A. officer said, “That is thinking like the agency does! If there is a report that was mistaken or flawed, you pull it out from the computers completely.” Burr said that he also intended to give the Panetta-review documents, still in the committee safe, back to the C.I.A. When I asked Feinstein about Burr’s attempt to claw back the report, she said, “I was surprised, and somewhat suspicious about who put him up to it.”

Brennan had prevailed, in a way that had seemed highly unlikely six months earlier. “John was able to wend his way through a minefield,” his old friend Grenier said. Brennan’s relations with Democrats on the Intelligence Committee remain hostile. In May, Wyden, Heinrich, and Senator Mazie Hirono sent Brennan a letter, demanding he acknowledge that the computer search was improper and affirm that it would not happen again. His statements after the report’s release continue to resonate. “It surprised me that he wouldn’t use the word ‘torture,’ ” the former intelligence officer said. “I know he needs to defend the agency to have credibility there—but he has exceeded that.” In the years since 9/11, the former officer continued, “the C.I.A. has done remarkable things and reprehensible things. I think the way the agency went on the offensive after 9/11 surprised Al Qaeda, and ninety per cent of what it did was right on track. But what was done with those two psychologists and the interrogations—the agency lost its sense of where the edge was, and went over it. The report really is important. In the future, if the C.I.A. faces a situation where it comes to the edge, hopefully it will know to go back—and understand that it cannot do anything.”

As for Feinstein, the officer continued, “She was a serious overseer, knowledgeable, interested in the work. She was really hard-nosed on targeted killings—and someone who was a quasi liberal from California. She was such an important asset, for the C.I.A.” Listening to Feinstein’s speech last March, he said, “I thought, for the agency to lose that is horrifying.”

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One day in early March, I met with Feinstein and several staff members in her office in the Hart Building. A large, vividly detailed painting of landscapes in Nepal, which she and Blum had visited on one of their early trips, hung behind her desk. When I told Feinstein what the former intelligence officer had said about her, she smiled and said, “That’s nice to know. See, you don’t hear this. That’s for sure.” She continued, “It’s a lonely place. And it’s a lonely place for my staff, because they get beaten up.” It appears that Burr and other Republicans may still try to punish the staff for taking the Panetta documents back to the Hart Building, even as Feinstein has said that removing the documents was justified by the committee’s oversight responsibility. Alissa Starzak, who worked on the report before leaving the committee, in 2011, was nominated last July to be general counsel of the U.S. Army. Her confirmation was slowed by Republicans angry about her role in the report; Burr has said that he is striving to keep her from getting confirmed. Feinstein and Chambliss, who has retired, worked well together. No one would say that about Feinstein and Burr. “Some people around here look at oversight as being the best buddy, and always supporting them, no matter what,” Feinstein said. “That isn’t oversight. Oversight can’t just be going to a hearing and listening to what somebody says, when you don’t know whether they’re telling you the truth or not.” After all, she noted, “part of the C.I.A. tradecraft is deception.”