CNN) — Top Republicans are demanding an apology from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or proof to back her claim that the CIA misled Congress about the use of harsh interrogation tactics.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says the CIA misled Congress about harsh interrogation tactics.
Pelosi last week said that she was briefed by the CIA on such techniques only once — in September 2002 — and that she was told at the time that techniques like waterboarding were not being used.
Pelosi, D-California, said she learned from an aide that waterboarding had been used after other lawmakers were briefed in 2003.
A recently released Justice Department memo says the CIA used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al Qaeda leader imprisoned at U.S. facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Monday that if Pelosi’s accusations are not true, she may need to step down.
“She made some outrageous accusations last week where she said that the CIA lied to her and lied systematically over a period of years. That is a very, very serious charge,” Hoekstra said Monday on CNN’s “American Morning.”
“Either the CIA needs to be held accountable for their performance during this time or the speaker needs to be held accountable and be responsible for the actions and the statements that she made last week. One or the other is correct, one or the other is wrong,” he said.
Hoekstra wants the notes from the CIA briefing in question to be declassified, as does Pelosi. The House speaker says the notes will show she wasn’t told that techniques such as waterboarding were being used. Related: GOP wants Pelosi held accountable
While Pelosi declined offers to appear on the Sunday talk shows, her critics fired away.
House Minority Leader John Boehner demanded that Pelosi provide evidence to support her accusations.
“Lying to the Congress of the United States is a crime,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And if the speaker is accusing the CIA and other intelligence officials of lying or misleading the Congress, then she should come forward with evidence and turn that over to the Justice Department so they can be prosecuted. And if that’s not the case, I think she ought to apologize to our intelligence professionals around the world.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Pelosi “has stepped in it big time.”
Steele said he wants to know if President Obama backs Pelosi’s account or that of the CIA director. The White House has not commented on the controversy.
Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate, used a different outlet to voice his criticism, posting a seven-stanza poem about the House speaker on his Web site.
“She sat in briefings and knew about enhanced interrogation; But claims she wasn’t there, and can’t give an explanation. She disparages the CIA and says they are a bunch of liars; Even the press aren’t buying it and they’re stoking their fires.”
“I believe in the integrity of the men and women who sacrifice to keep us safe; Not the woman who has been caught flat-footed, lying to our face. I say it here and I say it rather clear — It’s time for Nancy Pelosi to resign and get out of here,” he wrote.
As Republicans continue to hammer away, Republican strategist and CNN contributor Ed Rollins said Monday that Pelosi has no one to blame but herself.
“This is a self-inflicted wound. … She brought the whole subject up,” he said. “She started this. I think it was the worst week she’s had. I’m not accusing her of lying or any of the rest of that, but I think she certainly doesn’t have her facts correct.”
But Democratic strategist and CNN contributor James Carville said he doesn’t see what the big deal is.
“I think that she and [CIA Director Leon] Panetta ought to sit down, come out. I don’t think the Democrats want to be like the Bush administration and be at war with the CIA. And it might be that they have different recollections here. And if there are different recollections, we’re not going to resolve what was said in a meeting seven years ago,” he said on CNN Sunday. “It could be that people remember something differently. I have no idea. But it looks like something we can get to the bottom of without a lot of trouble.”
Following Pelosi’s remarks, Panetta on Friday stood up for the agency and challenged Pelosi’s assertions.
“There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I’m gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress,” Panetta said in a letter to employees.
“Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values,” he said.
Panetta said the agency’s records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers “briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed.’”
Pelosi issued a response to Panetta and shifted her criticism from the CIA to the Bush administration.
“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 who work to keep our country safe,” she wrote
Separately Thursday, the CIA rejected a request from former Vice President Dick Cheney to declassify memos that Cheney has said show that the agency’s severe interrogation methods were crucial to getting information from detainees that helped disrupt terrorism plots.
In her most detailed account to date, Pelosi said she was told during a classified briefing in September 2002 that the CIA was not engaged in waterboarding, even though records now indicate that the agency had employed the method dozens of times on an Al Qaeda suspect one month earlier.
“The CIA was misleading the Congress” as part of a broader Bush administration pattern of deception about its activities, said Pelosi (D-San Francisco).
Pelosi’s comments amount to an allegation that the CIA violated its legal obligation to keep congressional leaders accurately informed. Republicans responded by ratcheting up their criticism of Pelosi.
“I think the problem is that the speaker has had way too many stories on this issue,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
Boehner said that given the briefings that were provided to Pelosi and other Democrats, their recent criticism, following their initial silence, is an attempt “to have it both ways.”
“It’s pretty clear that they were well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were,” he said.
Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, said it was “outrageous that a member of Congress would call our terror-fighters liars.”
The controversy has become a political side-show to the broader debate over CIA interrogation methods that Obama banned during his first week in office — a decision that Cheney and other Republicans have alleged will make the nation less safe.
Pelosi has been among the most vocal critics of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism measures. On Thursday, she reiterated her call for the creation of a “truth commission” to investigate Bush-era practices.
Republicans have opposed that idea and warned that any such undertaking also would bring scrutiny to Democratic lawmakers. They have focused in particular on Pelosi, accusing her of hypocrisy for failing to attempt to stop the interrogation practices until well after she had learned about them in detail.
Pelosi said no protest would have mattered to Bush administration officials, and she pointed to competing legal opinions within the administration that had been brushed aside. Instead, she said her priority was to help deliver a Democratic majority to Congress as a way of terminating Bush administration policies.
The attacks on Pelosi gained traction last week when the CIA released a chart that showed she and former Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), who were then the top members of the House Intelligence Committee, were the first lawmakers to be told of the CIA’s interrogation program.
The table said both members attended a briefing in September 2002 during which the CIA described the particular interrogation techniques “that had been employed.” In August of that year, records now show, the CIA used the waterboarding method on Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times.
The table did not indicate whether waterboarding was specifically mentioned in 2002, but it did show that a senior aide to Pelosi attended a 2003 briefing in which the method was discussed.
Pelosi acknowledged that she was then informed by the aide that waterboarding was being used but noted that the disclosure came just one month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “At the same time,” she said, “the administration was misleading the Congress on the weapons of mass destruction.”
The CIA did not respond to Pelosi’s charges that the agency misled Congress. Agency spokesman George Little said, “The language in the chart . . . is true to the language in the agency’s records.”
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee met with reporters Thursday to defend Pelosi and said the CIA routinely withheld key information in classified briefings.
“You have to play 20 questions with them,” said Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Menlo Park). “They are not forthcoming with information.”
Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the chairman of the panel, said he intended to introduce legislation that would impose new standards on what the CIA is required to report to Congress.
In a separate matter, Cheney on Thursday lost — at least for now — his effort to have the government declassify memos describing the success of the CIA program. Cheney had requested their release in March.
In a letter to the National Archives, where the records are kept, the CIA said it could not declassify the documents because they were subject to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
“For that reason — and that reason only — CIA did not accept Mr. Cheney’s request,” said another CIA spokesman, Paul Gimigliano.
The civil liberties groups that filed the lawsuit criticized the CIA’s decision, noting the irony that the agency was citing a suit seeking the documents’ release as justification for not doing so.
“It is unusual for Amnesty International to find itself on the same side . . . as Cheney,” said Tom Parker, a counter-terrorism expert at the organization. “But we welcome his late conversion to the value of transparency in government.”
PHANTOM AIR FARCE PICTURES May 5, 2009 —
The $328,835 snapshots of an Air Force One backup plane buzzing lower Manhattan last week will not be shown to the public, the White House said yesterday.
“We have no plans to release them,” an aide to President Obama told The Post, refusing to comment further.
The sole purpose of the secret photo-op, which sent thousands of New Yorkers running for cover, was to take new publicity shots of the presidential jet over the city.
“The photos . . . are classified — that’s ridiculous,” Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., said.
The photos have not technically been “classified,” a White House aide said, but they are being kept from public view.
New Yorkers said they could not understand how a president who shares intimate snapshots from the White House could justify keeping these secret.
“So we’re not gonna see the fruits of this cruel joke?” said Frank Antonelli, 39, one of the Wall Street traders spooked by last week’s flyover.
“I’m not surprised. Obama . . . wouldn’t further all the bad publicity by putting out those pictures.”
By JEREMY OLSHAN
In this day of split-second media, ever more increasing demonstrations of idiocy seem to be on the rise. Take for example a news item reported by Katie Stallcup of Auburn, Alabama (“Councilman removes Confederate flags from graves, “Opelika-Auburn News, April 23, 2009).
City Councilman Arthur L. Dowdell believes that being elected to a city-wide post allows him to be above the law. On Thursday, April 23, the “Honorable” Dowdell Pulled his car into the Pine Hill Cemetery in Auburn and proceeded to “pull up” small Confederate flags placed on the graves of Confederate veterans, which were recently decorated for Confederate Memorial Day, a State holiday celebrated in Alabama on Monday, April 27.
In fact, one of the flags was “snapped” in two by the Councilman. Or, if one is to believe Mr. Honorable, the flag “might have snapped itself,” he said. “If it did, so what? If I had my way, I would have broke them all up and stomped on them and burned them.”
And what in the world could have given the Councilman the idea that he could simply march into a cemetery and begin removing private property?
Evidently, some City cemeteries have covenants restricting deed owners from placing certain decorations on the graves of the dearly departed. However, Pine Hill Cemetery has no such covenants, and the graves are private property purchased by the individuals or the family of those individuals buried in the cemetery.
But in the interest of “consistency,” the Councilman and Mayor will be looking into taking away some of the property rights of deed holders within Pine Hill Cemetery.
Let’s put aside the fact that Confederate flags were involved, and let’s use as our example a large, plastic pink flamingo.
I live in a subdivision without covenants and without a Home Owners’ Association. Let’s further say that I live next door to a lunatic who is gaga over pink flamingos. In fact, this individual is so obsessed with the filthy beasts that his entire lawn is one vast sea of pink flamingos.
I am quite offended by this unrestrained use of lawn ornaments. I am the butt of my friend’s jokes. My children are frightened to go outside. In short, I am being oppressed by the vile fowls.
Then what is a boy to do? Run on my neighbor’s property and rip every last blessed bird out of the ground, crushing one into recyclable material for good measure?
No. Simply because I am annoyed, insulted, hurt, and maybe even scarred, I do not have the right to enter upon my neighbor’s lawn and begin removing and destroying his private property.
Certainly, my neighbor would have me arrested, charged with a number of criminal offenses, such as trespass, destruction of property, assault on a bird, and so on. In fact, he would undoubtedly sue me for civil damages as well, probably for more money than the pink plastic poop is worth, simply to teach me a lesson.
Why then does Councilman Dowdell think he is above the law? The truth — he is an elected official. Until Americans wake up and hold their elected officials accountable for their stupid actions in the name of the electorate, none of our fundamental rights will be safe.