Storm center over Pelosi

The Hill ^ | May 14, 2009 | Mike Soraghan and Jared Allen

[jazusamo]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged on Thursday that she knew in 2003 that terrorism suspects were waterboarded.

During a tense press conference, Pelosi sought to deflect criticism to the CIA, which she said lied to her about the practice.

Pelosi said she learned of the waterboarding after her national security aide, Mike Sheehy, sat in on a February 2003 briefing with her successor on the committee, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). Sheehy has since left Pelosi’s office.

Pelosi defended herself for not speaking out at the time about information disclosed in a classified briefing. Asked why she did not co-sign a formal objection by Harman after Sheehy was told of the waterboarding, Pelosi said any objection by Harman or herself would have done little good.

“No letter could change the policy,” she said. “It was clear we had to change the leadership in Congress and in the White House. That was my job, the Congress part.”

The controversy over what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has erupted into one of the toughest fights of her speakership. Republicans have criticized Pelosi for tacitly agreeing to practices she considers torture in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, and then going after the Bush administration now that political winds have shifted.

Her accusation in her weekly press conference Thursday raised the stakes in that fight, pitting her against the agency charged with fighting international terrorism. And she twisted the knife when she compared the agency’s interrogation briefings to its faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a sensitive topic at the CIA.

“Those briefings gave me inaccurate and incomplete information,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference.

“At the same time, the Bush administration was misleading the American people about the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

Asked if she was saying the briefers had “lied” to her, she said, “Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States.” She said the CIA “misled us all the time,” and agreed that the agency should release notes of the briefing, as Republicans have requested.

Republicans, who have reveled in watching Pelosi squirm, accused her of changing her story. One dubbed her account “Pelosi 5.0.”

“I think the problem is that the Speaker has had way too many stories on this issue,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at his weekly news conference. “It’s pretty clear that [Democratic leaders] were well-aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were, they were well-aware that they had been used, and it seems to me that they want to have it both ways.”

He also said he found Pelosi’s assertion that she was misled by the CIA highly dubious.

“I’ve dealt with our intelligence professionals for the last three and a half years on an almost daily basis, and it’s hard for me to imagine that our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress ... I don’t know what motivation they would have to mislead anyone.”

The CIA stood by the account of its briefings, which were released last week after a request from Republicans.

“The language in the chart — ‘a description of the particular EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] that had been employed’ — is true to the language in the agency’s records,” said George Little, a CIA spokesman.

The CIA records indicate Pelosi was briefed specifically about interrogation methods used on suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah. But the records don’t specifically cite the practice of waterboarding.

Pelosi said that she was told specifically in a 2002 briefing that waterboarding was not being used.

“The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed,” said Pelosi, who was briefed at the time as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Pelosi is facing criticism on an issue where Democrats thought they were going after wrongdoing by the Bush administration. She’s been jabbed for convoluted answers not just by her critics but even by the usually Democrat-friendly “Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

Despite the furor, Pelosi does not appear to be losing the backing of her fellow Democrats. The liberals most angered about the use of abusive tactics are backing her and insist the fault lies with the Bush administration. When the Democratic Caucus went behind closed doors Thursday morning, no one asked about it, according to sources.

After the press conference, eight of the 13 Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee assembled with talking points to back up Pelosi. They said members of Congress, especially those in the minority, have almost no power to change intelligence policies.

“It is ridiculous to argue that the Speaker, who was then the ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee, could have prevented President Bush from carrying out this policy,” said House Intelligence panel Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas).

Questions about Pelosi’s briefing have dominated this week’s news cycle, and built up to her press conference on Thursday.

Reporters filled up the scarce seats in the small room early, despite Pelosi’s reputation for starting well after the scheduled time, and the session drew more than its regular share of cable news personalities.

When Pelosi started, she deviated from her standard practice of speaking from notes or off the cuff. Four minutes into the press conference, she started reading a statement.

Pelosi prefaced her explanation with a review of her long record of human-rights work, which she called “a great focus of my time, even before I came to Congress and here,” and by reminding the room of her oath pledging never to disclose classified information.

The Speaker then reiterated her previous explanations that she had been briefed only once in 2002, when she was the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.

“I was informed then that the Department of Justice’s opinions had concluded that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques were legal. The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed,” she said, slowly punctuating each of the last four words for extra emphasis.

All but two of the 16 questions the Speaker took were on her past statements. Two questions about healthcare drew a mix of audible laugher and booing from the crowd of reporters.

When she tried to leave, she was drawn back by a persistent television reporter. When she finally left, it was on the arm of her longtime communications director, Brendan Daly.

[SE Mom]

Thanks for the ping. There’s also a lot of interesting back and forth over at The Corner about all this as well.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

[Marine_Uncle]

SV. Thanks for the nice list of links you composed in thread 20. Think I’ll bookmark this post.

[Grampa Dave]

On Sept. 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA briefed Rep. Porter Goss, then House Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mrs. Pelosi, then the committee’s ranking Democrat, on EITs including water boarding. They were the first members of Congress to be informed.

So, who was the director of the CIA, from 9/11 to 2004?

George J. Tenet was the Director of CIA, from 1997–2004 .

Tenet was appointed by President Clinton and approved by Congress. Tenet then became the CIA director in August of 1997.

So, Pelosi is now saying that George Tenet lied to her or ordered his congressional briefers to lie to Nancy.