Word: pelosi
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...Sure enough, CIA charts of who was briefed and when started surfacing. Topping the list? Pelosi, then the top Democrat on the intelligence committee the CIA says was briefed in September 2002 "on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed." Zubaydah, a deputy to Osama bin Laden, was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, according to Justice Department documents. Pelosi says she was never informed that the tactics described to her that day were employed - just that they were under consideration. "We were told specifically...
...Some discrepancies would seem to bolster Pelosi's case. Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who, according to the chart, was briefed later that same month, says he has no recollection of such a meeting. And Senator Jay Rockefeller, who was briefed in September 2003, says critical information was withheld from him about the legality of the practices to such an extent that by 2005 he had launched a "full-scale effort to investigate," according to his office. (Read about the torture memos that were released...
...other side is former Representative Porter Goss, who was the only other Representative at the same briefing as Pelosi in 2002. Goss, who went on to head the CIA, said in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post that they had been told about the EITs. "Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as 'waterboarding' were never mentioned," Goss wrote...
...surprising part of Pelosi's statements wasn't her claim to have been misled - Dems have accused the Bush Administration of misleading them on everything from evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to funding for No Child Left Behind - it was that she was blaming the CIA itself. Even through the WMD contortions, Dems only ever accused the Administration of manipulating CIA intelligence to its own ends. Pelosi is effectively accusing the agency of a dangerous bias - an indictment it cannot directly answer without revealing secret information...
...news reignited a story that has been dogging Pelosi for weeks, through a surprise trip to Iraq and back, Mother's Day and the passage of the war supplemental bill. The Obama Administration this week reversed its decision to release hundreds of photos of detainees being intimidated and tortured, in an effort to get away from a subject that is increasingly eating into media coverage. Pelosi's move throws down the gauntlet before an agency known for selectively leaking politically lethal information when attacked and threatens to further distract...