Senator Dianne Feinstein and the Central Intelligence Agency are having an increasingly-public spat, it seems. Feinstein has now accused the C.I.A. of spying on her congressional committee (which is charged with oversight of the C.I.A.) and the C.I.A. has accused Feinstein's committee of taking documents they weren't supposed to have. They are both trying to convince Eric Holder's Justice Department that the other is at fault.

Of course, the irony of Dianne Feinstein (of all people) complaining about government spying is rich indeed, since she herself has been such a big fan -- or champion, even -- of the concept of government surveillance. It's as if Dick Cheney suddenly started complaining about warmongering, or perhaps Darrell Issa complaining about conspiracy theories. The disconnect is startling, to say the least, and it's hard to muster up much sympathy. Feinstein has been a staunch supporter not just of the National Security Agency, but also the concept of the telephone and internet monitoring programs themselves. So she's standing on some very shaky ground when she complains that her staffers' computers were monitored by the C.I.A. It's not like she's used to taking this high road on surveillance when it comes to American citizens who don't work for her committee, in other words.

The heart of the matter is nothing more than interagency bickering, at least from what has so far been made public. Feinstein's committee is working on a report on torture. They have been for quite some time now, ever since Obama put a stop to these Orwellian "enhanced interrogation techniques" when he became president. The investigation is trying to answer all sorts of questions, not least among them whether torturing prisoners actually produced any valuable intelligence at all.

The C.I.A. hasn't been exactly thrilled that the committee is investigating. Because of the secrecy of the documents, they set up a special secure room where the committee was provided access to millions of documents. Initially, they just dumped all these documents onto a computer system, with no way of searching or organizing them (later, they did provide a search tool, after the committee complained). What happened next is open to interpretation, at least for now.

Feinstein's committee found some documents that seemed helpful, and printed them out. These were summaries of other documents, summaries that had been created for Leon Panetta when he was heading the C.I.A. What exactly is so incriminating (or even scandalous) about these summaries has not been adequately explained. But according to the C.I.A., the committee wasn't supposed to have access to them -- they maintain that the committee members somehow broke through a firewall and accessed parts of the computer system they weren't authorized to access. Feinstein maintains that the C.I.A. then took the step of not only reviewing the logs of their own computer systems, but also viewing the computers of the committee's investigators. Both sides have asked the Justice Department to intervene, saying that the other side is legally in the wrong.

For the time being, this is nothing more than a sideshow. One assumes that, sooner or later, ruffled feathers will be smoothed and perhaps some better rules for accessing secret documents will be set up.

Sideshow aside, though, we shouldn't lose sight of the main event. Feinstein's committee is getting close to completing what has been described as a massive and scathing review (clocking in at a whopping 6,000 pages) of the recent post-9/11 history of America's use of torture. This report will be presented to the White House. The public will likely not see it now, or possibly ever. Feinstein, to her credit, wants to prepare some sort of overview document that can be declassified and released for public consumption. When the report is complete and when it gets delivered to the White House, the leaking will undoubtedly begin, so it would be nice to have some sort of official document that sums up the committee's findings available to the public.

Much attention is now being paid to the back-and-forth between Feinstein and the C.I.A. Much sneering derision is being liberally applied to Feinstein's "I'm shocked!" complaints of governmental computer spying overreach, which she completely deserves for not caring nearly as much about spying on people who don't work for her committee (i.e., the rest of America). She will be the butt of jokes among civil libertarians for some time to come, to put this another way.

But all of this will fade away, most likely. Because the real fireworks aren't going to begin until the report is complete, and until some of its conclusions start leaking out to the media. Which, in the end, is a lot more important than the combined tantrums of Dianne Feinstein and the C.I.A.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant