[TheMercenary]

Pelosi, "I know nutting!"

April 23, 2009
Categories: Pelosi

Pelosi: I didn't know about use of waterboarding

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing back on GOP charges that she knew about waterboarding for years and did nothing.

Pelosi says she was briefed by Bush administration officials on the legal justification for using waterboarding — but that they never followed through on promises to inform her when they actually began using "enhanced" interrogation techniques

"In that or any other briefing…we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel ... opinions that they could be used," she told reporters today.

Earlier, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized Pelosi and other Democratic leaders for backing probes into the use of waterboarding — after reportedly failing to raise objections during a briefing on its potential use in 2002.

"Well, yesterday I saw a partial list of the number of members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, who were briefed on these interrogation methods and not a word was raised at the time, not one word," Boehner told reporters at his weekly news availability.

"And I think you're going to hear more and more about the bigger picture here, that what — the war on terror after 9/11 was done in a bipartisan basis on lots of fronts. And that bigger story will be coming out," he added.

Pelosi says members who receive classified intelligence briefings are powerless to act on them — or even discuss them with staff -- due to confidentiality requirements.

As a consequence, some members simply skip classified briefings to avoid being "hamstrung" by requirements they keep silent on the topics discussed.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennt...rboarding.html

Pelosi, "Ok, maybe I was fully informed. But it's Bush's fault!"

Pelosi briefed on waterboarding in '02 [UPDATED]

Nancy Pelosi denies knowing U.S. officials used waterboarding — but GOP operatives are pointing to a 2007 Washington Post story which describes an hour-long 2002 briefing in which Pelosi was told about enhanced interrogation techniques in graphic detail.

Two unnamed officials told the paper that Pelosi, then a member of the Democratic minority, didn't raise substantial objections.

Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen wrote:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

UPDATE: A Pelosi spokesman passes along her response to the article when it first appeared, claiming that Pelosi's successor on the intel committee -- Yep, Jane Harman -- lodged a protest with the CIA when she learned waterboarding was in use.

"On one occasion, in the fall of 2002, I was briefed on interrogation techniques the Administration was considering using in the future. The Administration advised that legal counsel for the both the CIA and the Department of Justice had concluded that the techniques were legal.

I had no further briefings on the techniques. Several months later, my successor as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, was briefed more extensively and advised the techniques had in fact been employed. It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred."

Lower down in the article, the authors and their sources acknowledge Pelosi & Co. were severely constrained in what they could do with the information — and had no way of knowing how the techniques would ultimately used or abused in a pre-Abu Gharaib era.

Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.'"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennt...ng_in_02_.html