Did Nancy Pelosi know about waterboarding? The ABC report. Via Greg Sargent, we have the PDF of the intelligence documents here.
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary:
“It seems we’ve had a widespread and unseemly charade going on. As Congress calls for a witch hunt for those who drafted and carried out policies that protected us, they should consider just how abhorrent the public may find their feigned outrage.”
Emptywheel at Firedoglake doesn’t trust the CIA:
“First, there’s this paragraph the CIA included in the letter they sent with the briefing list to Crazy Pete (which ABC didn’t think important enough to include when they first posted this story):
This letter presents the most thorough information we have on dates, locations, and names of all Members of Congress who were briefed by the CIA on enhanced interrogation techniques. This information, however, is drawn from the past files of the CIA and represents MFRs completed at the time and notes that summarized the best recollections of those individuals. In the end, you and the Committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened. We can make the MFRs available at CIA for staff review. [my emphasis]
CIA: “Here’s a list, but we won’t vouch for its accuracy.”
ABC: “We’ve proven that Nancy was wrong!!”
ABC, after having been burned in the past, took documents that the CIA itself said might not be accurate, and treated them as accurate.”
Allah Pundit has a post up:
“Follow the link and note ABC’s update about how many other Democrats knew what was up. I’m starting to think that “rebranding” really might be the answer for the GOP. Since all it takes to escape the left’s wrath on issues like torture or extending the war in Afghanistan or quadrupling the size of a deficit they claimed to care about under Bush is calling yourself a Democrat, why not just call ourselves Democrats from now on?”
Jed Babbin at Human Events has a post up.
Some on the left are saying there’s no proof that Pelosi knew. But others are saying that’s not the point.
“One related point: I’m truly amazed to watch the eruption of “controversy” today over the fact that Nancy Pelosi was briefed in 2002 on various aspects of the CIA’s interrogation program, as though (a) this is some sort of new revelation and (b) it has any bearing on whether there should be investigations and prosecutions into Bush crimes. As many of us have long pointed out, the extent to which Democratic leaders in Congress were complicit in Bush lawbreaking — including torture — is a major issue that needs resolution, and is almost certainly a key reason why there have been no investigations thus far.”
“This is what they call a teaching moment. Pelosi, like Richard Shelby, Porter Goss, Bob Graham, Jay Rockefeller, Pat Roberts and Jane Harman, received briefings about CIA torture. The Senate intelligence committee’s investigation of the CIA will not focus on what members of Congress knew; when they knew it; what they endorsed; what they objected to; or what they pushed back against. As such, it will be an incomplete picture, whitewashing the role of elected legislators in the torture apparatus. (Also worth remembering: the CIA has a very rich history of lying to Congress.) An incomplete picture of what was done in our name prevents us from moving on. Hence: the case for an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the State Department and Congress about torture. No more lies, no more obfuscation, no more cant, no more excuses, no more torture.”
Back to the right, Victor Davis Hanson:
“Pelosi has repeatedly misled the country about her exact role in such oversight and the degree to which she was briefed — quite unlike Yoo, Bybee, etc. who have not denied their briefs, but sought to argue they were legitimate options given the crises of the times and the nature of the killers involved. All of which leaves us in a quandary — will those who are on record demanding to indict, impeach, disbar, etc. lawyers who offered legal briefs (and have told the truth of their role in offering such opinions), now turn their animus to others who (1) had the legislative authority to stop cold what they knew was going on, but instead approved it, and (2) have not been at all truthful about such complicity?”
Michelle Malkin has a post up, as well.
The reason I don’t have Instapundit here is I can’t figure out the permalink sitation. Clark Stooksbury in the American Conservative has a post up that helps me:
Glenn Reynolds has found a torture issue he can get behind—the Nancy Pelosi hypocrisy angle: “PELOSI LIED, THE WATERBOARDING ISSUE DIED: CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of ‘Enhanced Interrogations’.” He has gone to that well several times.
Sully says:
“An observation about pure partisanship from the American Conservative. If you can only see even a moral issue as profound as torture through the prism of pundit egotism and petty partisanship, you really are lost.”
More when I find it.
UPDATE: John Cole
Via Cole, Scott Horton is in the camp with Emptywheel and Greg.
UPDATE #2: Marc Ambinder:
“Responses among the cognoscenti to the CIA’s contention that it briefed Nancy Pelosi on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques are fairly typical. Those inclined to defend Democrats point to the CIA’s history of misleading Congress and the incomplete record the CIA’s notes sketch out; those inclined to indict Pelosi are throwing out terms like “hypocrite” and worse. The document itself is an interesting artifact of our intelligence culture and its relationship to the oversight committees. The White House might have been reluctant to share details of certain programs; it’s hard to know what the CIA’s motives were. By statute, they’re required to provide Congress with information that holds themselves accountable, and Congress’s ability to independently verify these facts is very limited. Pelosi, and Porter Goss, were the two ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee. That they were the only two so early briefed shows how highly classified and sensitive the program was at the time. It was probably an “Unacknowledged SAP” — a “special access program,” meaning that it was not only classified, dissemination of information about the program had to be communicated through highly classified channels.”
UPDATE #3: Josh Marshall at TPM:
“Speaking for myself though I’d be very surprised if the key Democrats at the time weren’t briefed on a lot of this stuff. And to the extent that they didn’t know the details, that it might have been not wanting to know rather than having been kept in the dark.
If it turns out that the Democrats in leadership were really kept wholly in the dark about this stuff, that’d be nice to know, I guess. I’d like to think they’re not compromised. But expecting or hoping for that strikes me as a recipe for disappointment and eventual special pleading in their defense.”
Moe Lane at Redstate:
“And here’s the important thing: we knew this already, and so did you. You’ve been lying to the American people about this for six or so years solely because that way you could maybe stop the screaming that was going on in your own head. It didn’t work, but then, it never was going to: you really shouldn’t have tried it in the first place.”
UPDATE#4: Via The Week:
Scott W. Johnson And via Johnson:
Jules Crittenden has a bunch of links.
Here’s Tom Maguire:
“In Pelosi-world, the “Use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah” was a presentation on things they might do in the future, not the stuff that had been done the previous month; “backgroud on authorities” was the focal point; and “a description of particular EITs that had been employed” was really a description of techniques that *would be employed*. Uh huh.
Well, even in he unlikley event that her memory is accurate and the CIA memo to files is riddled with inaccuracies, we are left wondering why the enhanced techniques were aceptable to Ms. Pelosi when discussed in the abstract but only became objectionable when actually employed. Is this her “talk is cheap” defense?”
Tony Campbell in Moderate Voice:
“Nancy Pelosi is not the only person on Capitol Hill who knew about and condoned these methods of gathering information. Congressional leaders in both parties are as culpable as the former President and Vice-President. If some on the left want to file charges against Bush and Cheney, fine… let’s make sure that we totally clean house and rid ourselves of everyone who had a part to play in this messy business.”
UPDATE #5: Michael Goldfarb
UPDATE #6: Sam Stein in HuffPo. Aide denies waterboarding was discussed.
UPDATE #7: Kevin Drum and Zachary Roth at TPM.
More from Ed Morrissey.
UPDATE #8: David Freddoso at National Review
UPDATE #9: Scott Horton
UPDATE #10: Jay Newton-Small
More from Jennifer Rubin
More from Allah Pundit
UPDATE #11: Lisa Schiffren
UPDATE #12: Walter Shapiro in Politics Daily.
UPDATE #13: Jon Stewart on Pelosi last night.
Ed Morrissey on Stewart.
Peter Wehner on Stewart.
James Kirchick in TNR.
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May 10, 2009 at 7:25 pm
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