By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent David Espo, Ap Special Correspondent – 1 hr 10 mins ago
WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bluntly accused the CIA on Thursday of misleading her and other lawmakers about its use of waterboarding during the Bush administration, escalating a controversy grown to include both political parties, the spy agency and the White House.
"It is not the policy of this agency to mislead the United States Congress," responded CIA spokesman George Little, although he refused to answer directly when asked whether Pelosi's accusation was accurate.
But the House's top Democrat, speaking at a news conference in the Capitol, was unequivocal about a CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.
"We were told that waterboarding was not being used," the speaker said. "That's the only mention, that they were not using it. And we now know that earlier they were." She suggested the CIA release the briefing material.
Pelosi also vehemently disputed Republican charges that she was complicit in the use of waterboarding, and she suggested the GOP was trying to shift the focus of public attention away from the Bush administration's use of techniques that she and President Barack Obama have described as torture.
moreby Phoenix Woman
More over at FDL as it happens, but here's a taste:
Pelosi:
In a just-completed Capitol Hill press conference, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said without equivocation that the CIA is lying when it implies that she was briefed in on the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah. Pelosi stated that the CIA told her, in September 2002, that waterboarding was not among the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on high value detainees. Reporting by Marcy—among others—now shows that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah started at least a month earlier.
"They misled us every step of the way," she said.
Bob Graham: CIA invented two "briefing sessions" that never happened! (UPDATE: Marcy Wheeler has more.)Late Update: We should have noted that there's an asterisk next to Rockefeller's name in the document for the February 2003 briefing, under which it says: "Later individual briefing for Rockefeller." The exact date isn't specified. But the clear meaning is that the same topics were discussed at the individual briefing as at the Roberts briefing, since the description of what was talked about applies to both briefings. So if the document is accurate -- something, we should note, that
has been questioned -- Rockefeller did hear in detail about water boarding, though the exact date remains up in the air.
Late Late Update: Sen. Rockefeller's office emails the following statement:
Senator Rockefeller was briefed but was not presented with the full picture nor was he told critical information that would have cast significant doubt on the program's legality and effectiveness. Senator Rockefeller became increasingly concerned about the program, and in early 2005 he launched a full-scale effort to investigate. The Senate Intelligence Committee's review is ongoing and he believes it is critically important that there be a full accounting of the Bush Administration's interrogation policies.
link PelosiUpdated to add:
By Josh Marshall
We now have two big developments on the torture front that may allow the whole torture issue to take on a life of its own and frustrate President Obama's attempts to close the door on the issue. First, as you've seen, is
Nancy Pelosi's claim this morning that the CIA is lying about what it told members of the Democratic opposition in the early part of this decade. It's still not completely clear to me if she's just talking about the narrow point of what she was told in mid-late 2002 versus what she was told in 2003. (
ed.note: Just talked to Zack Roth, our reporter on this story. And he confirms that Pelosi
does seem to be talking about what she knew from the late 2002 briefing. There doesn't appear to be any dispute about the 2003 one. However, while it's a relatively narrow point if your issue is Pelosi, I'm starting to wonder whether the unseen mover behind these changed briefings may not be uses of torture as part of the effort to find intel to justify the Iraq invasion. We'll keep you posted.)
But this is the Speaker of the House, second in line to the presidency, accusing the country's chief intelligence agency of lying to the country and to members of Congress. And the political pressure to get to the bottom of that -- whether they're lying, whether she's lying etc. -- will likely be irresistible.
Next you have
a flurry of claims that a key motive behind the push to torture was to elicit 'confessions' about an alliance between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida, which was of course the key predicate for the invasion of Iraq. That again has to create much more pressure to clarify what happened. The basis of most of the anti-torture push has been the assumption that torture was used for the purpose of eliciting information about future terrorist attacks. Whether it was illegal, wrong-headed, misguided, immoral -- whatever -- most have been willing to at least give the benefit of the doubt that that was the goal. If the driving force was to gin up new bogus intel about the fabled Iraq-al Qaida link, politically it will put the whole story in a very different light. And rightly so.
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