CIA Director John Brennan has just apologized to Senate intelligence committee leaders Feinstein and Chambliss (there’s a raging oxymoron) after his inspector general found that CIA employees did indeed improperly search Senate computers earlier this year while that committee was investigating the agency’s interrogation techniques.

The CIA inspector general concluded “that some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between” the committee and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to a shared classified computer network, Boyd said.Brennan informed Senate intelligence committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the senior Republican on the committee, “and apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers as described in the (inspector general’s) report,” Boyd said.

The development was the subject of wildly different characterizations by sources on either side of the dispute, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to go beyond official statements.

Senate aides familiar with the matter say the CIA used classified “hacking tools” and created a fake user account in an effort to retrieve documents the CIA believed the Senate staffers had improperly accessed.

A U.S. official familiar with the inspector general report disputed that hacking tools were used, and said that there was no malicious intent behind the CIA actions, but simply an effort to account for documents believed to have been improperly accessed.

So, you see, he’s apologized for getting caught spying on our representatives, and by extension, us, and will dole out discipline, if need be. That should make us all feel just ducky, safe and secure from further violations of our privacy. Coupled with the likelihood that the useless Eric Holder will do absolutely nothing resembling justice for the admitted violation, once again it’s unlikely any real consequences will befall those involved. What Brennan didn’t seem to offer is all about how it’ll never happen again.