Is Pelosi Busted?
May 9th, 2009 by Nick SaintABC reports:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002, according to a report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence’s office and obtained by ABC News.
The report, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Capitol Hill officials Wednesday, appears to contradict Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics. Instead, she has said, she was told only that the Bush administration had legal opinions that would have supported the use of such techniques.
The report details a Sept. 4, 2002 meeting between intelligence officials and Pelosi, then-House intelligence committee chairman Porter Goss, and two aides. At the time, Pelosi was the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.
The meeting is described as a “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of particular EITs that had been employed.”
EITs stand for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a classification of special interrogation tactics that includes waterboarding.
Case closed, from where Michelle Malkin is standing:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew from September 2, 2002 that enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, were being used on jihadi detainees.
She knew. From Day One.
That’s what the CIA memo, published at Human Events, shows.
ABC News follows.
Emptywheel leaps to Pelosi’s defense:
So Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller, and Porter Goss have all already identified problems with a document that the CIA itself refuses to vouch for. And who does ABC believe?
One more thing, which is more about CYA at the CIA than outright deception–maybe. For just about every briefing, the CIA lists who from the CIA attended the briefing (by function): for example, it lists CTC (Counterterrorism), DCI (Director), DDCI (Deputy Director), OGC (General Counsel). The exception are six briefings in 2005 and one in 2006. That’s particularly curious, given that Mary McCarthy has said the CIA lied during two briefings in 2005 (though note–that story says the briefings took place in February and June, which doesn’t correlate with the list, which shows briefings in January, March, October, and November).
I’ll have more to say about this list in the coming days (particularly about the way it shows CIA briefed Republicans on torture a lot more than it did Democrats–and even the CIA never asserts it told any Democrat about waterboarding until after the 2004 IG Report came out).
But for now, suffice it to say it’s clearly full of easily discerned problems. Which might be why CIA won’t vouch for it.
Nevertheless, ABC thinks it’s as great as the story they got about Abu Zubaydah being waterboarded just once.
Marc Ambinder splits the difference:
One can’t help but conclude that while Pelosi might not have known everything, she knew enough. And in today’s political climate, that’s kind of tough. But back in 2002, when more Americans (probably) supported those techniques than they do now (and most Americans support at least some of the EITs), and when Pelosi herself did not have the means or the legal knowledge to perform her own analysis of the legality of the techniques, and when the climate of dissent was quashed — her reaction is understandable… maybe not, from our current perspective, excusable, although there is a range of opinion on that question.
I’d say Ambinder pretty much has the right of it. Pelosi is almost certainly guilty - the idea that she was briefed on legal justifications for EITs but didn’t think to wonder if they would actually be used is absurd - but this latest isn’t much of a smoking gun. Meanwhile, the single-minded focus on waterboarding will continue to confuse this issue, in this case to Pelosi’s benefit. Her defender’s can say - rightly - that, pace the Malkin’s of the world, this doesn’t provide much evidence that she knew about waterboarding specifically. But that is irrelevant: Pelosi has denied knowledge that any of the EITs were being used. If they told her that Zubaydah was being tortured via sleep deprivation and stress positions, she was lying, and she needs to go.
May 9th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Truly amazing- Pelosi was caught lying red-handed… and she’s STILL lying.
Of course, she had no objection to the use of EITs for almost 5 years- until she was Speaker in 2007 and the antiwar left raised it as an issue. Suddenly she’s against it, and/or “knew nothing”. And obviously willing to lie to the whole country to create a more favorable reality.
Apparently Obama and Pelosi forgot something: the CIA kills people… it’s in their job description. Did they really think these killers were going to meekly take one for the team… when the team captain is a lying, incompetent, arrogant nebbish with no real-world experience and who told them they need to kiss his ring? - please
Pelosi is a no-talent hack who’s made a lot of enemies. Going to be hard to BS her way out of this one- her approval rating was like 9% before this story even broke.