July 12 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney went “outside the law” in ordering the Central Intelligence Agency not to tell Congress about a secret counterterrorism program, Senator Dianne Feinstein said.

“I think you weaken your case when you go outside the law,” Feinstein, the California Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on the “Fox News Sunday” program today. “We should have been briefed before the commencement of this kind of sensitive program.”

The Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, Richard Durbin of Illinois, called for an investigation into the allegations, saying “to have a massive program that is concealed from the leaders in Congress is not only inappropriate, it could be illegal.”

“The executive branch of government cannot create programs like these programs and keep Congress in the dark,” Durbin said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “There is a requirement for disclosure.”

Feinstein said CIA Director Leon Panetta briefed lawmakers late last month about the secret program, which he said he had canceled. Panetta told lawmakers that Cheney had ordered the program be kept secret from Congress, she said.

Lucy Tutwiler, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment today. Cheney’s role in ordering information about the program withheld was reported yesterday by the New York Times on its Web site.

‘A Big Problem’

“This is a big problem, because the law is very clear,” Feinstein said. “If the Intelligence Committees had been briefed, they could have asked for regular reports on the program, they could have made judgments about the program as it went along. That was not the case, because we were kept in the dark. That’s something that should never, ever happen again.”

The disclosure may re-ignite a debate between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Republicans over her claim earlier this year that the CIA misled Congress in 2002 about harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, charged in May that when she was a member of the House intelligence panel, the spy agency gave her misleading and inaccurate information about whether it had used waterboarding on suspected terrorists. The CIA has acknowledged it used the interrogation technique on three detainees suspected of being al-Qaeda operatives.

Political Cover

The Cheney disclosure “looks to me suspiciously like an attempt to provide political cover to her and others,” Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program today that an order to keep Congress in the dark on the issue was not “appropriate.”

“If somebody told the CIA not to inform the appropriate members of Congress on information they should be informed on, that’s wrong, but that isn’t -- that isn’t reason to disassemble the CIA and make them a whipping child,” Gregg said. “This is a big issue, not only from the standpoint of whether -- what the vice president did, but from the issue of the morale and capacity of the CIA to develop information.”

Letter to Panetta

Seven Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said that Panetta told lawmakers the agency had misled Congress since 2001 about “significant actions,” according to a letter to the CIA director released July 8. The letter didn’t describe what CIA actions were at issue.

In the letter, the seven legislators said he had “recently” testified that “top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress” and “misled members” from 2001 until last week.

The CIA is required by law to notify Congress of covert intelligence operations.

Representative Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, told reporters July 10 that the CIA was directed not to inform Congress of a long-running intelligence operation that Panetta informed lawmakers about last month. Eshoo didn’t say who ordered the information withheld.

To contact the reporter on this story: Cary O’Reilly in Washington at caryoreilly@bloomberg.net; James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 12, 2009 17:50 EDT