Pelosi Fuels Fire on Interrogations
voices.washingtonpost.com
Pelosi Fuels Fire on Interrogations
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (Calif.) assertion at a press conference this morning that the Bush administration and the Central Intelligence Agency misled her and the Congress regarding the treatment of suspected terrorists adds further fuel to the fire on an issue that has been on a low boil for weeks.
Asked whether she was accusing the CIA of lying to her during a 2002 briefing on the use of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," Pelosi said: "Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am."
She went on to call on the CIA to release the details of briefings they provided to Congress and for the creation of a truth commission to "determine how intelligence was misused and how controversial and possibly illegal activities like torture were authorized within the executive branch."
Pelosi's press conference comes amid a series of allegations from Republicans -- inside and outside of Congress -- that she knew far more about the treatment of detainees in the early part of the decade than she initially let on.
"The Speaker has had way too many stories on this issue," said House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) at a press conference moments ago. He added that he has "not one doubt" that interrogations of detainees were conducted "within the law" and that he was opposed to the idea of a truth commission.
As the Post's Paul Kane notes, Pelosi acknowledged publicly for the first time today that she was aware that detainees were being waterboarded as long ago as 2003 when a member of her staff was part of a briefing in February of that year in which it was revealed that waterboarding was ongoing.
Pelosi's press conference has both short term and long term political impact.
In the short term, it snuffs out President Obama's preferred message of the day -- pushed at a scheduled town hall today in New Mexico -- regarding credit card reform. Obama and/or White House press secretary Robert Gibbs are certain to face questions about Pelosi's remarks whenever reporters are given access to them today.
Pelosi's comments -- and the firestorm they will almost certainly set off -- could speed up the timetable for an announcement of Obama's Supreme Court nominee, which has been speculated as coming either next week or shortly after Memorial Day. If the torture debate dominates the news for the next several days, the White House may want (or need) a way the change the subject and the announcement of a Supreme Court justice would almost certainly provide the necessary distraction.
The long-term political prognosis is less clear. The Obama administration has made no secret of the fact that they would prefer not to spend time looking back at what happened under President George W. Bush since it distracts from what they believe to be the important tasks at hand -- most notably turning around the economy.
And, it's hard to imagine that the White House is pleased with Pelosi's press conference today -- knowing that the allegations she has made further complicate an already sticky political entanglement, making it far more difficult for the issue to be dismissed out of a desire to look forward rather than backward.
Pelosi's comments are also -- almost certainly -- not her last words on this subject. As indicated by Boehner's comments, Republicans are going to continue to paint Pelosi as telling a series of conflicting stories about what she knew and when she knew it.
While Pelosi's press conference this morning was clearly intended to put to rest a process story that all politicians hate, it may well have the opposite effect -- raising more questions about her timeline and her past statements.
Make no mistake: Pelosi would not have held this sort of press conference unless she and her inner circle believed that she was losing altitude -- politically -- on the issue. But, her decision to do so could have wide-ranging political implications that will reach from Congress to the White House and back.
By Chris Cillizza | May 14, 2009; 1:01 PM ET
AND FROM THE HILL:
Pelosi claims CIA lied to her about waterboarding
By Mike Soraghan and Jared Allen
Posted: 05/14/09 11:23 AM [ET]
thehill.com
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) counterattacked the CIA on Thursday, asserting that the agency lied to her about waterboarding.
She noted that the briefing occurred at the same time the agency and the Bush administration were claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, an embarrassing chapter in the history of the CIA.
She said that in a September 2002 briefing she was specifically told waterboarding was not being used on detainees. Waterboarding of a terrorism suspect had begun in August.
"Those briefing me 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. She said she agreed that the CIA should release notes of the briefing, as Republicans have requested.
Republicans, who have reveled in watching Pelosi squirm under their barrage of accusations on waterboarding, accused her of changing her story.
"I think the problem is that the Speaker has had way too many stories on this issues," said 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 Pelsoi'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."
CIA records released last week after they were requested by House Republicans indicate that Pelosi was specifically briefed about interrogation methods used on the suspect, Abu Zubaydah. But the records don't specifically cite the practice of waterboarding.
But Pelosi said that she was specifically told in the 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 then as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
Pelosi said she learned that suspects were being waterboarded 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.).
Her aides cut off questions before she could be asked whether she learned then that the waterboarding had begun prior to her earlier briefing.
She was also pressed on why she said in April that she'd not been told about waterboarding, when her aide and Harman had been told about it in 2003. Pelosi said she was responding to what she had personally been briefed about.
Republicans, seeking to derail investigations into the Bush administration officials who authorized the interrogation techniques that President Obama has deemed “torture,” have sought to turn the tables on Pelosi.
Pelosi has advocated for a "truth commission" to investigate the interrogation program. Republicans claim she'd known about waterboarding since 2002, but now wants to investigate Bush administration officials because the political winds have shifted.
Democrats also stress that they passed legislation banning torture shortly after they took control of Congress in 2007, but President Bush vetoed it as part of a spending package that would have withdrawn troops from Iraq. |
