CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of 'Enhanced Interrogations'

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002
about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda
prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the
past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were
actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified
briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep.
Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever
briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and
Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary
of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the
Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss
briefing covered "EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah." EIT
is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one
of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to
have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against
him.

The issue of what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has become a matter
of heated debate on Capitol Hill. Republicans have accused her of
knowing for many years precisely the techniques CIA agents were using
in interrogations, and only protesting the tactics when they became
public and liberal antiwar activists protested.

In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi's office said today that she
had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it
had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique
to use in interrogations.

"As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in
September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they
were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used," said
Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman.

Pelosi's statement did not address whether she was informed that other
harsh techniques were already in use during the Zubaydah
interrogations.

In December 2007 the Washington Post reported that leaders of the
House and Senate intelligence committees had been briefed in the fall
of 2002 about waterboarding -- which simulates drowning -- and other
techniques, and that no congressional leaders protested its use. At
the time Pelosi said she was not told that waterboarding was being
used, a position she stood by repeatedly last month when the Bush-era
Justice Department legal documents justifying the interrogation
tactics were released by Attorney General Eric Holder.

The new memo shows that intelligence officials were willing to share
the information about waterboarding with only a sharply closed group
of people. Three years after the initial Pelosi-Goss briefing, Bush
officials still limited interrogation technique briefings to just the
chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence
committees, the so-called Gang of Four in the intelligence world.

In October 2005, CIA officials began briefing other congressional
leaders with oversight of the intelligence community, including top
appropriators who provided the agency its annual funding. Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam and an opponent of
torture techniques, was also read into the program at that time even
though he did not hold a special committee position overseeing the
intelligence community.

A bipartisan collection of lawmakers have criticized the practice of
limiting information to just the "Gang of Four", who were expressly
forbidden from talking about the information from other colleagues,
including fellow members of the intelligence committees. Pelosi and
others are considering reforms that would assure a more open process
for all committee members.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/cap...riefed_on.html

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