Pelosi: C.I.A. Misled Congress Over Waterboarding

Water skiing, water boarding, fun stuff. I was misled by the CIA. I thought they were trying to be friendly with those nice Middle Eastern fellows. I never dreamed that they would leave them out in the middle of the lake to drown. Why, that's simply terrible.

May 14, 2009, 12:33 pm

Pelosi: C.I.A. Misled Congress Over Waterboarding

By Carl Hulse AND Brian Knowlton

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times House Speaker Nancy Pelosi discussed what she knew about harsh questioning of terror detainees during a news conference on Thursday.

Update | 3:21 p.m.
Under fire from Republicans for what she knew about harsh questioning of terror detainees, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday asserted that the C.I.A. had misled Congress about its techniques, even as she acknowledged that she had learned in 2003 that the agency had subjected suspects to waterboarding.

At a tense press conference, Ms. Pelosi said for the first time that a staff member alerted her in February 2003 that top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee had been briefed on the use of tough interrogation methods on terror suspects.

But she said the fact that she did not speak out at the time due to secrecy rules did not make her complicit in any abuse of detainees. She accused the C.I.A. and Bush administration of lying to Congress about what was actually transpiring with the detainees.

“I am saying that the C.I.A. was misleading the Congress and at the same the administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction,” Ms. Pelosi said.

The C.I.A., reacting to Ms. Pelosi’s remarks, said that a chart prepared by the Director of National Intelligence and cited last week by congressional Republicans to show that Ms. Pelosi had taken part in a September 2002 briefing on interrogation techniques was “true to the language in the Agency’s records.”

An agency spokesman, George Little, added that the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, had pointed out in a recent letter to Congress that the information “is drawn from the past files of the C.I.A.” and represented contemporaneous memoranda “and notes that summarized the best recollections of those individuals.”

But Ms. Pelosi said she was told at that briefing that waterboarding, one of the most controversial of the harsh techniques employed, was not being used.

Republicans took sharp issue with the speaker’s remarks.

“The speaker’s comments continue to raise more questions than provide answers,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican minority leader. “It’s pretty clear that they were well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were; they were well aware that they’d been used; and it seems to me that they want to have it both ways. You can’t have it both ways.”

Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, issued a more scathing response.

“It’s outrageous that a member of Congress would call our terror-fighters liars,” he said in a statement released by his office. “Instead of prosecuting or persecuting, our country should be supporting our intelligence professionals who work to keep us safe.”

The Republican-driven furor over what Ms. Pelosi knew about waterboarding and other techniques has put the speaker on the defensive. She repeatedly referred to a carefully prepared statement to respond to multiple questions at the session with reporters.

Ms. Pelosi blamed the dispute on Republicans and others, saying they are trying to shift attention from those who authorized the interrogations and other tactics now found to be questionable.

Republicans have said the speaker was now criticizing the Bush administration for abusing terror suspects when she herself was aware of it at the time.

“This is a diversionary tactic to take the spotlight off of those who conceived, developed and implemented these policies, which all of us long opposed,” Ms. Pelosi said.

Ms. Pelosi said that at the sole briefing she attended as the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee in September 2002, the only mention of waterboarding by C.I.A. officials was that while it was deemed to be legal, the technique was not being used.

On Friday, Congressional Republicans, citing a new accounting that showed some top Democrats taking part in briefings on harsh methods in 2002, had accused Democrats of full complicity in approving the Bush administration’s brutal interrogations.

A new chart of briefings, prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and cited by the Republicans, appeared to cast doubt on Ms. Pelosi’s assertion that she was never told that waterboarding and other methods had been used, but only that the C.I.A. believed they could legally be used.

The chart said that in a briefing on Sept. 4, 2002, attended by Ms. Pelosi, the interrogation methods that ”had been employed” against a prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, were described. But according to the legal memorandums released last month, Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded 83 times the month before the briefing, so any objection from Democrats at the Sept. 4 briefing would have come too late.

Indeed, Ms. Pelosi said Thursday that she had learned only after the Sept. 4 briefing that waterboarding had already been used and that some administration experts had questioned its legality.

“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,” she said, referring to the interrogation techniques.

Ms. Pelosi said she had supported a letter opposing the tactics sent in 2003 by Representative Jane Harman of California, who replaced Ms. Pelosi as the top Democrat on the intelligence panel when Ms. Pelosi took over as Democratic leader. But she said that she realized a letter would not change administration policy and said she instead set about to win Democratic control of Congress, then held by Republicans.

“It was clear we had to change the leadership in Congress and in the White House,” she said. “That was my job — the Congress part.”

Ms. Pelosi urged the C.I.A. to disclose the contents of the briefing she attended and said she did not believe there was more she could have done when she learned of the waterboarding.

According to C.I.A. records declassified last week, Ms. Pelosi attended the Sept. 4 briefing about the agency’s interrogation techniques with her Republican counterpart, Representative Porter J. Goss of Florida. Based on agency notes from the briefing, the two lawmakers were told the specific techniques “that had been employed” on Abu Zubaydah.

The C.I.A. records do not list the individual techniques that lawmakers were told about. However, in an op-ed last month, Mr. Goss said he remembers being told specifically about waterboarding during the September 2002 briefing.

“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,” Mr. Goss wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

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