Proof Pelosi lied:
In Case You Had Any Doubts
Jennifer Rubin - 08.27.2009 - 7:29 AM
The Wall Street Journal editors in a helpful summary make two key points about the newly released CIA documents.
First, Nancy Pelosi did indeed lie. She was briefed on the enhanced interrogation techniques:
The IG report belies House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claims that she wasn’t told about all this. “In the fall of 2002, the Agency briefed the leadership of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees on the use of both standard techniques and EITs. . . . Representatives . . . continued to brief the leadership of the Intelligence Oversight Committees on the use of EITs and detentions in February and March 2003. The [CIA] General Counsel says that none of the participants expressed any concern about the techniques or the Program . . . .” Ditto in September 2003.
And second, the interrogation techniques worked:
The most revealing portion of the IG report documents the program’s results. The CIA’s “detention and interrogation of terrorists has provided intelligence that has enabled the identification and apprehension of other terrorists and warned of terrorist plots planned for the United States and around the world.” That included the identification of Jose Padilla and Binyam Muhammed, who planned to detonate a dirty bomb, and the arrest of previously unknown members of an al Qaeda cell in Karachi, Pakistan, designated to pilot an aircraft attack in the U.S. The information also made the CIA aware of plots to attack the U.S. consulate in Karachi, hijack aircraft to fly into Heathrow, loosen track spikes to derail a U.S. train, blow up U.S. gas stations, fly an airplane into a California building, and cut the lines of suspension bridges in New York.
The same is true of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who planned the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who directed the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t talk before the enhanced interrogation techniques. They did after. And we got essential information. You decide if the techniques “worked.”
So naturally, we are reinvestigating the CIA. In a sane world, Pelosi would be on the hot seat, the grandstanders who decried Bush’s antiterror policies would be discredited, and Dick Cheney would be taking a victory lap. But we have long since passed the point at which facts matter. The Obama team shamelessly airbrushes the past, rejects the techniques that kept us safe, and continues with full prosecutorial zeal against what it perceives as the real enemies—the intelligence operatives and Bush officials who successfully extracted key information.
The American people haven’t shown much interest in the netroot inquests, don’t like the idea of closing Guantanamo, and, I suspect, would be horrified if CIA employees were ever tried. At some point the politically obsessed Obama White House may realize they’ve embarked on a foolhardy course of action. Not out of decency or a revived sense of concern for national security, but for the sake of their own political survival, they may eventually decide that enough is enough. But we aren’t there yet.
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