CIA Chief Rebuts Pelosi on Briefings
By SIOBHAN GORMAN and NAFTALI BENDAVID
MAY 16, 2009
online.wsj.com
WASHINGTON -- The Central Intelligence Agency's chief fought back Friday against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's assertion that the CIA "was misleading" Congress, issuing a memo defending the integrity of its employees and contradicting her assertion that she wasn't told about the agency's use of waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists.
Later in the day, Ms. Pelosi tried to defuse what has turned into an unusual open feud between Congress and the spy agency, with a statement praising the work of intelligence officers and redirecting her rhetorical fire toward the Bush administration.
Apart from the institutional contretemps, the matter has put Ms. Pelosi in conflict with CIA director Leon Panetta, a former colleague when both belonged to California's Democratic congressional delegation.
"CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed,'" Mr. Panetta wrote in a memo to agency employees. He was referring to an alleged senior al Qaeda detainee in CIA custody in September 2002, when Ms. Pelosi attended a briefing in her capacity as the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
"Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," he wrote. "That is against our laws and our values."
Other intelligence officials also contradicted Ms. Pelosi's account of the briefing, saying her assertion that she wasn't told waterboarding was in use at the time is wrong. "That's 180 degrees different from what the CIA's records show," an intelligence official said.
During the month before Ms. Pelosi's briefing in September 2002, Mr. Zubaydah was subjected to 83 instances of waterboarding. The procedure, which critics say is torture, entails dousing a captive's face to simulate drowning.
Ms. Pelosi didn't back down Friday from her insistence that she wasn't informed -- though her statement changed her tone toward the CIA. "My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community," she said.
But behind the scenes her aides mounted an aggressive defense, pointing to comments by former Sen. Bob Graham (D., Fla.), who was briefed three weeks after Ms. Pelosi and also said this week that CIA officials didn't tell him that any waterboarding had taken place. House and Senate Republicans briefed that September have said they weren't misled, but haven't stated whether they were told interrogators were using waterboarding at the time.
"The focus on the Speaker, and not the other people saying the same thing, including the person who was briefed on the same subject around the same time, doesn't do service to the story," said Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami.
The controversy has intensified in recent weeks, following Ms. Pelosi's criticism of interrogation techniques authorized by President George W. Bush, and Republicans have responded by asserting that she was aware of the practices years ago and didn't raise objections at the time.
Ms. Pelosi has repeatedly said she wasn't told until 2003 about their use. The CIA in a report last week suggested she was told at the 2002 briefing, an assertion she angrily denied Thursday.
Mr. Panetta's email to CIA employees Friday attributed Ms. Pelosi's version of events to politics. "There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business," he wrote. "But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress."
Mr. Panetta was hired to run the CIA in part for his political skills, and he and Ms. Pelosi have known each other for years. When she first came to Congress in 1987, she became close with a group of House members who shared a home, including Mr. Panetta, according to Marc Sandalow, author of "Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi's Life, Times and Rise to Power." The group had dinner every Tuesday.
"They've known each other a long, long time, and they are close," Mr. Sandalow said. "They're not close personal friends. ... She was always to his political left. He was the moderate and she was the San Francisco liberal. But they worked together perfectly well." |
