Thursday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the Central Intelligence Agency of lying to congress, which is a criminal offense, by the way.
'QUESTION: Madam Speaker, just to be clear, you’re accusing the CIA of lying to you in September of 2002?
PELOSI: Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am'
Friday Leon Panetta, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took issue with that reply.
'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
agency's use of waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists.
[...]
"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. Mr. Zubaydah was waterboarded, which
critics say is torture, 83 times during the month before Ms. Pelosi's
briefing in September 2002.'
Ms. Pelosi's press conference bordered on the incoherent. Quite frankly, the old broad needs new tricks, but there she is back at the same old well, which is beginning to show signs of running dry. She accused the Bush administration, which is out of office by they way, of trying to shift attention away from the real issue.
'So -- so let’s get this straight. The
Bush administration has conceived a policy, the CIA comes to the
Congress, withholds information about the timing and the use of this
subject. They -- we later find out that it had been taking place before
they even briefed us about the legal opinions and told us that they
were not being used.
This is a tactic, a diversionary
tactic to take the spotlight off of those who conceived, developed and
implemented these policies, which all of us long opposed.'
It's true that former Vice President Dick Cheney has recently stepped up in defense of Bush administration policies, but he isn't diverting anybody from anything. Far from it. When he decided it was time to speak up, he said straight out, putting a wet hanky on Abu Zubaydah's face isn't torture. I for one, agree with him. And if it is, so what? American lives were at stake and American deaths were prevented. The Bush administration got the information out of him, and they're proud they did. I am too. No diversions there.
But this has all caught poor Ms. Pelosi by surprise. I'd be willing to bet she thought that resuscitating the old torture story was going to be just another routine smear -- a chip-shot Bush-bash, a gimme, an easy nail in the Republican coffin.
But something wasn't quite right. Unusually pointed questions coming from reporters -- her own team for the love of god -- were bewildering. She tried to remind them of the good times, murmuring their special words. "Imminent threat?" she offered. It used to work every time.
'So let me say this: Of all of the
briefings that I had received, at this same time, they were
misinforming me earlier. Now, in September, the same time as the -- as
the briefing, they were telling the American people there were weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq and it was an imminent threat to the United
States.
I, to the limit of what I could say to my caucus,
told them the intelligence does not support the imminent threat that
this administration is contending.'
But the magic isn't there anymore. Where did their love go? The words "imminent threat" were always like a potion, sweet nothings guaranteed to set press hearts aflutter, so she thought. Or maybe it was never quite like that. Maybe it was the prim and proper looking Pelosi who was the one seduced. It's almost tragic.
Bush never frightened anybody with wild stories of
imminent threat, but saying he did made for a great story. If only somebody could give it some legs. Can you help us with our story,
Nancy? Can you push it? Oh, yes. Yes. I can do that. I love to do
that.
Well, they got their story but now it's old news, and there was never anything to it to begin with. Let's just go back a few years for a peek at who said what about the "imminent threat" from Iraq. This is from Ira Sharkansky's Shark Blog, October 21, 2003. The emphasis below is his, and not all of his links work anymore, but the quotes are accurate.
'Al Gore September 23, 2002
President Bush now asserts that we will take preemptive action even if the threat we perceive is not imminent.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi October 3, 2002
"As the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I have seen no evidence or intelligence that suggests that Iraq indeed poses an imminent threat to our nation. If the Administration has that information, they have not shared it with the Congress.
(It's fair to assume that if the administration did not share such
information with the House Intelligence Committee, it is because the
administration was not trying to tell Congress that Iraq posed an
imminent threat)
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz December 6, 2002
Some
people said [during the Cuban Missile Crisis] that Kennedy should have
waited until the threat was imminent. We hear that again today. But we cannot wait to act until the threat is imminent.
The notion that we can do so assumes that we will know when the threat
is imminent. That wasn't true even when the United States was presented
with the very obvious threat of Soviet missiles in Cuba. As President
Kennedy said 40 years ago, "We no longer live in a world where only the
actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a
nation's security to constitute maximum peril." If that was true in
1962, facing a threat that was comparatively easy to see, how much more
true is it today against threats developed by terrorists who use the
freedom of democratic societies to plot and plan in our midst in
secret.
Stop and think for a moment. Just when did the attacks of September
11 become imminent? Certainly they were imminent on September 10,
although we didn't know it. In fact, the September 11 terrorists
established themselves in the United States long before that date -
many months or even a couple of years earlier. Anyone who believes
that we can wait until we have certain knowledge that attacks are
imminent has failed to connect the dots that took us to September 11.
President George W Bush, State of the Union speech January 28, 2003
Some
have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have
terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us
on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully
and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations
would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam
Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
Senator Edward Kennedy January 28, 2003 [in reaction to the State of the Union speech]
[The President] did not make a persuasive case that the threat is imminent and that war is the only alternative
New York Times on the State of the Union, January 29, 2003 [archive only]
The heart of Mr. Bush's argument, however, is that America and the world
cannot afford to wait until it is clear that Iraq will attack America, or its allies.
''Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent,''
he said, a clear reference to European nations that argue that Mr.
Hussein is contained.
Los Angeles Times January 29, 2003
THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS; Bush Calls Iraq Imminent Threat
The above front-page headline in the L.A. Times is the earliest media
report that I can find which claims that the administration called Iraq
an imminent threat.'
Leave it to the LA Times to be the first to jump on the imminent threat meme, even in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Maybe Ms. Pelosi took that as a pledge of press loyalty: Yes Nancy, we know it's BS but the stakes are so high. If you run with it we'll back you.
But that was then and this is now, and the old sweet phrases don't mean that much anymore. The press can't be depended upon to protect her flank. Her's is the story that's going to sell the papers, if it's still possible to sell any. Pelosi has problems.
