Pelosi Follies

Josh Marshall: Not Exactly Airtight So those CIA documents that supposedly show that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on waterboarding also identify Porter Goss as a member of Congress at the time he was actually Director of the CIA.

Sargent: Porter Goss Won’t Say Whether He And Pelosi Were Told About Use Of Torture

Porter Goss, the former GOP Congressman who was in the room with Nancy Pelosi during their 2002 CIA briefing on interrogations, is declining through a spokesperson to say whether the two of them were told that enhanced interrogation techniques had been used.

Goss’ reticence raises still another round of questions about the accuracy of the recently-released CIA documents purporting to detail what members of Congress were told about the use of torture.

The CIA documents say that Pelosi and Goss, then the House Intelligence Committee chair, were given a description on September 4th, 2002, of the enhanced interrogation techniques that “had been employed” during interrogations. Republicans have seized on this as proof that Pelosi was told that torture, including waterboarding, was already in use, which she has denied.

I asked a spokesperson for Goss if he would confirm that he and Pelosi had been informed of the use of torture. Goss was out of town, so it took her a while to get back to me, but now she has: She declined to answer the question, saying that Goss would not elaborate beyond what he said in a Washington Post Op ed last month.

In that carefully-worded piece, Goss did not write he had been told that torture had been used. Rather, he merely wrote that members of Congress were told that the CIA was “holding and interrogating” suspects and that EITs had been developed. He said that members should have “understood” that EITs “were to actually be employed” in the future, without saying that they were even told this, let alone told that they’d been used.

This does not contradict Pelosi’s claim that she was only told that such techniques were legal, not that they had been or certainly would be used — the crux of the GOP’s attack.

So I asked Goss’ spokesperson directly: Were he and Pelosi informed that EITs, including waterboarding, had already been used, and were they given a rough sense that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded more than 83 times the previous month?

Her answer: “He believes that his Op-ed makes it very clear and is not engaging beyond it at this time.” She declined repeated requests to elaborate.

So here’s where we are: The Republican Congressman who was in the room during Pelosi’s briefing won’t directly vouch for the accuracy of the CIA’s claim that she had been briefed on the use of torture.

Sargent: Specter Defends Pelosi, Says CIA Has “Very Bad Record” On “Honesty”

Nancy Pelosi has picked up an unlikely defender in her standoff with the CIA. That would be the Senate’s newest Democrat, who delivered a scathing indictment of the CIA’s credibility today:

Sen. Arlen Specter took the opportunity Wednesday to defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has come under fire in recent weeks over a controversy surrounding when she was told of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques being used by the CIA.

“The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to — I was about to say ‘candid’; that’s too mild — to honesty,” Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency’s involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair.

The CIA has a “very bad record when it comes to honesty”? It’s funny that it’s fallen to Specter, of all people, to remind everyone of this. And it’s a pretty harsh quote, particularly coming from someone who was a Republican only a few weeks ago. Should be all over the cable nets soon enough.

Jay Newton-Small (Swampland): Pelosi's Probably Right

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had a tough week — much of it her own making. But in looking at the substance of the accusations, it increasingly looks like she was right. Porter Goss was careful to parse his words in the conditional future tense when talking about what, exactly, he and Pelosi were briefed on in September 2002:

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.

And Senator Richard Shelby also carefully avoided saying he'd been briefed on EITs that had already been used, saying only that he'd been told about the techniques. And “purported” isn't exactly a strong word – it's a synonym of suggested or claimed. From his statement:

As Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2002, Senator Shelby was briefed by the CIA on the Agency's interrogation program and the existence of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs). To his recollection, not only did the CIA briefers provide what was purported to be a full account of the techniques, they also described the need for these techniques and the value of the information being obtained from terrorists during questioning.

Bob Graham, who was theoretically in the room with Shelby, says he has no recollection of the meeting at all – this from a man who famously details his every waking minute. Perhaps the most astonishing response has been from the CIA Director Leon Panetta, who basically said: Don't trust our records. Which begs the question: what other issues have they kept questionable records on?

But all of this has been lost in the GOP sturm und drang, led, by – of all people – Pete Hoekstra and Newt Gingrich. Yes, Pelosi needs a serious lesson in public relations but it increasing looks like there's nothing wrong with her memory.

Marcy Wheeler: Senator Bob Graham Clarifies on His Briefing

Bob Graham (who has a good op-ed in the WaPo today that I will try to return to) just clarified some of my questions regarding the briefing on torture he received on September 27, 2002.

I had called to ask whether his explanation that Stan Moskowitz, from the Office of Congressional Affairs, did the briefing, meant that no one from CIA's CounterTerrorism Center was at the briefing. No, it doesn't. Graham's notes have a line next to Moskowitz's name, which suggests other people were with Moskowitz. Normally, Graham explained, the briefer would be someone who had an operational connection to the subject being briefed, which would support the likelihood that CTC was at that briefing. (In addition, Jose Rodriguez, then head of CTC, was still covert at the time, so they may not have used his name if he attended the briefing, but that's my speculation, not Graham's.)

I asked whether Richard Shelby attended that briefing. Yes, he did. That's significant because Shelby's and Graham's accounts are the only ones from members of Congress whose memory of the same briefing significantly differs.

Graham went on further to explain that he recollects the briefing covered the high value detainees captured by that date, and described what the intelligence community had gleaned from those detainees. His impression, he said, was that they had gathered that information using traditional techniques the military, FBI, and intelligence agencies had used in the past. I asked whether Ibn Sheikh al-Libi came up in the briefing, but he did not recall who was mentioned.

I asked (mostly for Mary) whether the CIA made any mention of the trip that Administration officials had made to Gitmo to discuss torture techniques--it had occurred just two days earlier. Graham had no recollection of such a discussion.

Finally, I asked whether Graham was making an explicit connection between his mention of the deceptive intelligence Congress was getting in the form of the NIE and other Iraq War intelligence. No, he was not making an explicit connection. Rather, in the face of those who have been suggesting it is unpatriotic to suggest that the CIA might not be fully committed to accuracy and full disclosure, Graham was reminding them that this was the same period when the Administration and CIA was ramping up the case for war. The NIE, in particular, establishes some standard of believability or not.

And we all know the NIE turned out to be horribly inaccurate.

Roth (TPM): In Savaging Pelosi For "Attacking" CIA, GOP Ignores Its Own Record Of Similar Attacks

We really shouldn't have to do this. As we've said before, the idea that it's some kind of outlandish and unconscionable slur to point out that the CIA -- the CIA, for chrissakes! -- can sometimes be economical with the truth is absurd on its face. But the Republican attacks on Nancy Pelosi for daring to make that claim just keep coming, so it looks like we're going to have to point this out:

Shocking as it sounds, the GOP hasn't always been so sensitive about harsh criticism of the CIA -- including leveling the charge that the CIA is being deliberately deceptive -- when it's served the party's political interest.

Before we delve into what Republicans have said about the spy agency in the past, let's refresh our memories on what they've been saying lately about Pelosi's charge that the CIA misled her, in a briefing on torture, about whether waterboarding had already been used.

Sen. Kit Bond, the vice chair of the Senate intel committee, today said Pelosi should apologize to CIA employees and called it "a tragedy that we are seeing this massive attack on our intelligence community." Elsewhere, Bond said: "It's outrageous that a member of Congress would call our terror-fighters liars."

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking GOP member of the House intel committee, called Pelosi's claim "outrageous."

Rep. John Boehner, the GOP House leader, said Pelosi "ought to either present the evidence or apologize."

Former speaker Newt Gingrich judged that Pelosi "disqualified herself to be the speaker." He said the allegation "smears everyone who's trying to defend her."

And former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, in a column in today's Washington Post, called Pelosi's charge one of "a series of blows to the pride and morale of the Central Intelligence Agency" leveled lately by Democrats.

So that's the now. (And believe us, we could go on, but we know your time is limited.) What about then then? What have Republicans said about the CIA over the last few years?

As we reported yesterday, top Pelosi antagonist Hoekstra has gone so far as to initiate a congressional inquiry into whether the CIA misled Congress on a different matter -- the 2001 shooting of a plane carrying an American missionary in Peru. Here's what Hoekstra said about the subject last fall:

"This issue goes to the heart of the American people's ability to trust the CIA," the Michigan lawmaker said Thursday. "Americans deserve to know that agencies given the power to operate on their behalf aren't abusing that power or their trust."

And here's another case of Hoekstra questioning the CIA's veracity -- on an issue remarkably similar to the Pelosi controversy -- dug up by commenter juccikucci. When CIA director Michael Hayden said that Congress had been briefed in advance on the agency's decision to destroy tapes that showed torture, a Hoekstra spokesman contradicted that claim, saying that Hoekstra was "never briefed or advised that these tapes existed, or that they were going to be destroyed."

And here's yet another, from Laura Rozen. Last year, Hoekstra accused the CIA of withholding from Congress information about negotiations with North Korea. Hoekstra accused the administration of failing to treat Congress with "respect," adding: "We regret to say the administration has deliberately attempted to sideline Congress in the fear that providing us with information about the North Korean regime's continuing lies and reckless behavior would undermine the current diplomatic approach."

It's not just Hoekstra, of course, who's been smearing our terror-fighters. When, in 2007, the CIA contributed to a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that Republicans viewed as insufficiently alarmist, Boehner told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "Either I don't have confidence in what they told me several months ago or I don't have confidence in what they're telling me today."

In 2006, Sen. Pat Roberts, who then chaired the Senate intel committee, accused the CIA of an "egregious intelligence failure" in declaring, under White House pressure, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Said Roberts: "This committee simply cannot accept intelligence assessments at face value," Roberts said. "Not having your actions second-guessed is something that is earned."

We could go on here, too. We haven't even gotten into the 2001-2003 period, when it was fashionable in hawkish Republican circles to depict the CIA as a nest of liberal bureaucrats who, in order to undermine President Bush, were deliberately downplaying evidence that Saddam had WMD and was tied to al Qaeda, .

Needless to say, it doesn't look like any of the Republicans who are now going after Pelosi expressed similar outrage at their own party's CIA bashing. In fact, in several cases it's been the same people on both sides of the issue.

Not that there's anything wrong with criticizing the CIA when it's deserved. In fact, when the Church commission recommended giving Congress a role in overseeing the CIA, back in the 1970s, everyone probably understood that criticizing the agency might be part of the job. And even that that criticism might sometimes involve suggesting that the agency was being less than truthful. As harsh as those words might be for the tender ears of some of today's Republicans.

Late Update: Think Progress finds Gingrich in 2007 referring to that NIE document on Iran as "fundamentally misleading" and "a deliberate attempt to undermine the policies of President Bush by members of his own government."

Gingrich speaks out against Pelosi May 20: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is back in the spotlight, and he seems to be everywhere, calling for the resignation of current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Is his outcry little hypocritical? Rachel Maddow is joined by The Nation's Chris Hayes.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

C&L: John Boehner Admits the CIA Lied to Pete Hoekstra

Heather Thursday May 21, 2009 5:30am

On The Situation Room John Boehner again calls for Nancy Pelosi to apologize for her statement that the CIA lied to her and that she should "come forward with documents" that support her. When confronted with the fact that Nancy Pelosi has no authority to declassify those documents Boehner admits that she does not but thinks the documents will not support her.

If John Boehner hasn't seen those documents either, how would he know if they would support her or not? Boehner is then asked about Pete Hoekstra's similar claims that the CIA also lied to him.

Blitzer: Last year the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, he said this in response to a case that he was watching very closely, an American citizen who was killed in a plane crash, the cover up he alleged involving the CIA, he said these words--"We cannot have an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress". That's what Pete Hoekstra said in 2008.

Boehner: Pete Hoekstra did say that. And the Inspector General at the CIA did an investigation and it became clear that some CIA operatives did in fact cover this up. This is not, we’re talking about two different issues here. All the facts in this case are on the table and the truth is now known to all of... to everyone.

BLITZER: So, based on what you know on that case involving Hoekstra, the case he was interested in, do you agree that the CIA then lied to Congress?

Boehner: I know as much about this case as Pete Hoekstra does and the Inspector General did in fact do an investigation, produced a report and frankly supported, I think, Pete’s claims. And all we're trying to do here in both cases is to get to the bottom, get to the truth, and the truth is what we want here. And the fact is that CIA Director Panetta issued a very strong letter to Speaker Pelosi making it clear that in his opinion they did not mislead her or lie to her. And so I either want to see the documents or I'd like to see the Speaker apologize.

So...Republicans saying the CIA lied to them...no problem. Nancy Pelosi...not so much. John Boehner tried to say that his questioning of the NIE on Iran was not the same as Nancy Pelosi saying the CIA lied. Now he asserts that Pete Hoekstra saying the CIA lied to him is not the same as Nancy Pelosi saying the CIA lied to her. The hypocrisy here is stunning.

As our own Jon Perr noted:

That House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has badly bungled the imbroglio over what she knew and when about the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture is hard to dispute. Seemingly snatching PR defeat from the jaws of victory, Pelosi should have instead simply called the Republicans' bluff and insisted on investigations of torture architects, perpetrators and "accomplices" alike, letting the bipartisan chips fall where they may. But by savaging Pelosi for her statement that the CIA "misled" Congress, Bush's Republican water carriers are again exhibiting selective amnesia. After all, just two years ago it was the same raging right which insisted the CIA was an "anti-Bush cabal" seeking to "undermine" the President.

You can read the rest of his post here: GOP in 2007: CIA "Misleading" and an "Anti-Bush Cabal".